Argentina marks 30 year anniversary of deadly Jewish community centre bombing in Buenos Aires

(18 Jul 2024)
RESTRICTION SUUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Buenos Aires, Argentina - 18 July 2024
1. People hold photos of bombing victims during a minute of silence
2. People hold photos of bombing victims while a siren sounds at the exact time of the attack
3. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Ariel Grunwald Mercovich, brother of Ileana Mercovich who was killed at the attack:
"I found his lifeless body a week later, a Monday at 5 in the morning. And I recognized her by her ring. How much pain, how much destruction, how much evil, how much death."
4. The stage with the writing (Spanish) "30 years, AMIA"
5. Argentine President Javier Milei greets people
6. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Amos Linetzky, president of AMIA, Argentina Israeli Mutual Association:
“It seems incredible that 30 years have passed since that cold morning of July 18, 1994. Thirty years without a single person answering for this attack. Thirty years in which the Argentine State has looked the other way, full of shortcomings, delays, and errors."
7. Various of people holding photos of the victims
8. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Amos Linetzky, president of AMIA, Argentina Israeli Mutual Association:
"Terrorists should be called terrorists. There is no room for euphemisms. We have been disappointed again and again for 30 years. We ask this government to make the AMIA cause once and for all a true State cause."
9. Various of people holding photos of the victims
STORYLINE:
Argentina is marking the 30 year anniversary of a deadly Jewish community centre bombing in Buenos Aires amid renewed calls for justice for the perpetrators.

On July 18, 1994, an explosion destroyed the headquarters of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) and left 85 dead and more than 300 injured, in the worst attack in the history of Argentina.

Relatives and representatives of the Jewish community remembered the victims on Thursday with a moment of silence, calling on the government to open a new investigation and make it a state priority.

Far-right president Javier Milei was present at the commemorative event in the reconstructed AMIA building.

The Argentine justice system determined that the attack against the Jewish center was carried out with a car bomb and blamed former Iranian officials who would have operated with the Lebanese terrorist organization Hezbollah.

Iran never accepted any responsibility or extradited the accused.

No arrests or convictions were made for the incident despite two trials against the alleged local accomplices.

A siren sounded on Thursday at the exact time of the attack.

“It seems incredible that 30 years have passed since that cold morning of July 18, 1994," said the president of AMIA, Amos Linetzky, before several hundred people who held up posters with photographs of those killed in the terrorist attack.

"Thirty years without a single person answering for this attack."

Pope Francis also expressed in a letter that “the memory of those who died in that dark tragedy remains alive in our prayers and in our continued commitment to justice."

The attack came two years after an attack on the Israeli embassy in the Argentine capital which killed 20 and injured 242.

The Argentine Jewish community is the largest in Latin America and the fifth largest in the world with some 230,000 people.

AP Video shot by Victor R. Caivano

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