Israel Denies Killing Buenos Aires Bombers

Israel has denied a claim by its former ambassador to Argentina that Israelis killed most of those responsible for the South American country’s worst terrorist attack.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor called the claim “complete nonsense,” but declined to elaborate.

“The statements by former ambassador Itzhak Aviran, retired for some 15 years, are completely disconnected from reality,” said a statement from the Ministry. “These remarks, made on no authority nor knowledge, are pure fantasy and do not reflect in any way events or facts such as he pretends to depict.”

Aviran said “the great majority of the guilty ones are already in the other world, and it was we who did this.” He also said that Iranians “were the main ones responsible” for the 1994 Jewish cultural center bombing that killed 85 people. Aviran served as Israel’s ambassador in Buenos Aires from 1993 to 2000, and was only blocks away from the explosion.

Aviran could not be reached Friday to explain his claims, which Argentina’s Jewish News Agency published the day before.

Argentine Prosecutor Alberto Nisman, meanwhile, said he’s asked the Argentine foreign ministry to formally request that an Israeli judge to compel Aviran to provide sworn testimony.

“I’m surprised by these affirmations,” Nisman said on Friday. “I would like to know how he knows this, who these people might be and what proof he has.”

Nisman has been exhaustively investigating the bombing, which he blames on a group of current and former high-level Iranian government officials, but has never been able to get them extradited to Argentina to stand trial.

“What he’s saying is that they (the Israelis) identified by first and last name the authors of the attack,” Nisman added. “I would like to hear Aviran say who these people are whom they theoretically ‘sent to the other world.’”

Argentina’s foreign minister, Hector Timerman, is leading a controversial diplomatic effort to resolve the case by questioning the suspects in Iran. Aviran called this Argentine-Iran accord “a farce” that has accomplished nothing, and suggested that the Israelis, by contrast, acted resolutely to take care of the case in a covert manner.

This article appeared in print on page 7 of the January 6th, 2014 edition of Hamodia.