1992 Bombing Of Israeli Embassy In Buenos Aires

American Jewish Committee
Friday, 20 November 1998

The Executive Director of the American Jewish Committee, David A. Harris, testified this Wednesday before the Supreme Court of Argentina regarding the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires which killed 29 people and wounded more than 200 others.

Mr. Harris' appearance before the Court, which lasted 90 minutes, focused principally on a September 1996 meeting between AJC and then Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov. During that meeting, which took place at the Russian Mission to the United Nations in New York, Mr. Primakov indicated that the Russian government had learned of a planned attack on an Israeli embassy in South America and "passed the information along," without specifying either the source of the information, its more precise contents, or those to whom the information was relayed. Just a few weeks later, Mr. Primakov added, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was destroyed.

Mr. Harris noted that subsequent efforts by AJC to learn more from the Russian leader have been unsuccessful. AJC had arranged to meet with Mr. Primakov in New York this fall, but he canceled his visit when President Yeltsin named him Prime Minister.

In June 1997, an AJC delegation traveled to Moscow and met with Valentin Yumashev, chief of staff to President Yeltsin. Despite Mr. Yumashev's stated willingness to pursue the lead on the unsolved bombing of the Israeli embassy, and a subsequent AJC letter, dated June 26, 1997, providing him with more details, no response has been forthcoming.

Prompted by this information, Mr. Harris was told in Buenos Aires this week, the Argentine Foreign Minister has tried without success, through its embassy in Moscow, to gain additional information.

AJC has been pressing the Argentine government to step up its investigation of the 1992 embassy bombing, as well as the also unsolved 1994 bombing, in Buenos Aires, of the AMIA Jewish community headquarters building, which left 86 people dead and another 300 injured. The bombing of the AMIA was the deadliest terrorist event in Argentina's history, and resulted in the largest Jewish death toll from terrorism outside Israel since World War II. For four consecutive years, AJC has published a status report on the investigations, and has also stayed in close contact with leaders of Argentina's Jewish community, as well as with government officials in Argentina, the U.S. and Israel.

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