Buenos Aires, May 19(EFE).- Argentina’s highest criminal court upheld Friday the 2004 verdict upholding the acquittal of five accused of belonging to “the local connection” of the Islamic fundamentalist terrorists who blew up a Jewish community center here in 1994, killing 85 people.
An appeal against the acquittal of the five had been presented by Argentina’s leading Jewish organizations and families of the victims of the attack against the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) on July 18, 1994; they had announced beforehand their intention of lodging an appeal with the Supreme Court of Justice in case of an adverse ruling.
When it received the case, the High Penal Chamber that handed down its decision Friday created a special secretariat that for months analyzed the evidence of the trial that, after almost three years, ended September 2004 with the acquittal of 22 Argentines accused of complicity in the AMIA bombing.
The Jewish organizations called for the conviction of those who had been judged “essential participants” in the attack, four former policemen and a shopowner alleged to have provided the truck used in making the car-bomb that destroyed the building.
The attack on the AMIA remains unpunished and the investigation is led by the district attorney Alberto Nisman.
At the same time, Judge Ariel Lijo is conducting a parallel investigation into irregularities committed when the case was in the hands of the former judge Juan Jose Galeano, who was removed from his position and dismissed for “poor exercise of his functions” last August.
The bombing of the AMIA was the second terrorist attack against Jewish targets in Argentina, and followed the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires on March 17, 1992 that took 29 lives.
Both tragedies were attributed to Islamic terrorist organizations, although in neither case did investigations lead to the arrest of any foreign extremists.
