Argentina Escalates Border Security Over Bomb Plot Targeting Jews

Argentina said on Saturday it would tighten security at its border with Paraguay after its embassy in the United Kingdom received an anonymous tip alerting authorities to the possibility of bomb-making materials entering across its northern border.

The tip warned of a person seeking to ship ammonium nitrate from Paraguay to Argentina “for a bomb with a Jewish objective,” the country´s Security Ministry said in a statement.

Authorities said they had launched an investigation to identify the individual cited in the tip.

More than 100 people were killed in two attacks in Argentina in the 1990s. In 1992, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was attacked with a car bomb, killing 29 people.

Two years later, an explosives-laden truck blew up outside the AMIA Jewish community center, killing 85 people. The bombing was attributed to Iran but no indictments were handed down.

In 2004, Alberto Nisman was appointed senior prosecutor and reportedly discovered that senior Argentine government officials were involved in a major cover-up of Iranian agents behind the attack. He also collected testimony against the heads of the Iranian regime, based on incriminating evidence from former Iranian president Seyyad Abolhassan Banisadr, various diplomats, Iranian opposition sources, Iranian intelligence official Farhad Mesbahi and from heads of the Iranian operational network in Europe.

The latter’s testimony was the most important card in presenting Nisman’s evidence to the heads of Interpol and convince them that he had connected enough material that would incriminate the Iranian government leaders responsible for the attacks that took place in Buenos Aires.

“The most senior officials involved in the prosecution, members of the intelligence service along with my government conspired to disrupt the discovery of the truth about the Iranian connection and avoid bringing those responsible to justice,” Nisman told Yediot Acharonot in 2007.

Nisman was found dead under suspicious circumstances in 2015, a day before he was set to participate in a closed-door congressional hearing surrounding his investigation into the perpetrators of the attack.

Argentina has the largest Jewish population in Latin America.