Argentina has formally asked Interpol to arrest Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi for his role in the 1994 terrorist attack on a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. The bombing attack resulted in the deaths of 85 people.
Argentina’s Foreign Ministry announced that, at its request, Interpol has issued a red notice for Vahidi in connection with the 1994 attack.
“Argentina seeks the international arrest of those responsible for the AMIA attack of 1994, which killed 85 people, and who remain in their positions with total impunity. One of them is Ahmad Vahidi, sought by Argentine justice as one of those responsible for the attack against AMIA,” read the statement.
Vahidi was part of an Iranian delegation visiting Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and Argentina also urged both countries to detain Vahidi while in their countries.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz applauded the action taken by Argentina.
“The Iranian interior minister is a murderer and a terrorist,” Katz posted on 𝕏. “Thanks to President Miley @JMilei and Foreign Minister Mondino @DianaMondino. The call to issue an arrest warrant against him for carrying out the attack against the Jewish community – a call that strengthens the Jewish communities and the families of the victims and sends a clear message: the free world is determined to stop the Iranian regime of terror @khamenei_ir.”
Argentina’s request comes after its court ruled earlier this month that the Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the deadly terror attacks against the Israeli embassy and the Jewish community center building in Buenos Aires in the early 1990s.
A suicide bombing killed 29 civilians and injured 240 people outside the Israeli embassy in the Argentinian capital in 1992.
Two years later, 85 people were murdered and over 300 injured when Hezbollah-affiliated terrorists detonated an explosives-laden van outside the local Jewish community center building in Buenos Aires, known as the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA). At the time, Vahidi was the commander of the Quds force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and is said to have been one of the masterminds of the attack. To this day, it remains the deadliest terror attack to take place in Argentina.
The Argentinian court specifically blamed former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and other senior Iranian and Hezbollah officials for the attack.
Victims of the bombing have sought justice for three decades, with Iran continually denying responsibility.
Source » allarab.news