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July 11, 2003
To: Officers, Rabbis, Key Contacts
From: Richard B. Stone, Chairman
Betty Ehrenberg, Director, International and Communal Affairs
Re: Anniversary of AMIA Attack in Argentina
July 18th will mark a day of great sadness as the international
community will commemorate the anniversary of the 1994 AMIA Jewish
Community Center terrorist bombing, which murdered 85 Argentines.
Although progress has been made in recent years to achieve justice
for the victims, it has been a slow and long and arduous process.
Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Tom Lantos (D-CA)
are asking their colleagues to join them in letters to Argentine
President Nestor Kirchner, thanking him for his decision to open
classified intelligence reports concerning this attack. We believe
that these files will show that the bombing of the AMIA building
as well as the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires that
took place in 1992 could not have happened without the support of
senior Iranian government officials and Hezbollah. This important
letter underscores the need to have a full accounting of
responsibility for this attack as part of the effort to fight
terrorism in the Western Hemisphere and around the world. The
letter also emphasizes that the United States Congress will
continue to monitor the trial of 20 alleged accomplices to the
AMIA attack, which began in September 2001.
We believe that this letter to Argentinean President Kirchner
would make an important statement about the commitment of the
United States to the war on terrorism and will benefit all the
countries around the world. Terror organizations such as Hezbollah
and the states that sponsor them must be held accountable for
their actions and meet the consequences.
A copy of the Ros-Lehtinen/Lantos letter to President Kirchner is
attached. Please call your Representatives and ask them to contact
Matt Zweig with the House International Relations Committee (HIRC)
Majority Staff at 5-3345 or Carol Doherty or Keith O’Neill with
the HIRC Democratic Staff at 5-6735 in order to add their
signatures to the letter. A parallel letter is being circulated in
the Senate. Please call your Senators and have them contact
Larianne Wordrow in Senator Coleman’s office (4-5641) or Jonathan
Pearl in Senator Dodd’s office (4-2823) in order to add their
signatures to the letter.
For more information, please call us at (212) 613-8124.
RBS
BE
TEXT OF LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF ARGENTINA, JULY 2003
H.E. Néstor Kirchner
President of the Argentine Republic
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dear Mr. President:
We would first like to extend our congratulations on your election
to the Presidency. As you begin your Administration, we look
forward to working with you to ensure Argentina's continued
economic recovery, and on other issues and challenges of mutual
concern.
As you know, July 18 will mark a day of great sadness as the
international community will commemorate the anniversary of the
1994 AMIA Jewish Community Center terrorist bombing, which
murdered 85 Argentines. A great deal of progress has been made in
recent years to achieve justice for the victims. We are pleased
that the long process of investigating this heinous terrorist
attack has led to the prosecution of twenty alleged accomplices to
the crime. If these defendants are convicted, we fully expect that
their sentences will reflect the gravity of the crime for which
they stood trial. The successful conclusion of this trial, with
sentences of appropriate length rendered, will be a solemn
demonstration of the seriousness with which Argentina has joined
the fight against terrorism. It will also send an unmistakable
message that impunity will not prevail and the rule of law will
not be deterred in Argentina.
The indictment of Iranian suspects Ali Fallahian, Moshen Rabbani,
Barat Ali Balesh Abadi, and Ali Akbar Parvaresh was truly a
watershed moment in the prosecution of the case and in the war on
global terrorism. While we welcome this important step, the
prosecution's evidence strongly indicates that these four
mid-level government officials could not have carried out their
heinous acts without their actions being sanctioned by the higher
levels of the Iranian government and without the active
collaboration of the Hezbollah terrorist organization, which we
urge be designated as such by the members of the Organization of
American States. We remain hopeful that all those responsible for
the AMIA bombing, including those additional suspects that Judge
Galeano named in his ruling, will be brought to justice and that a
full accounting of the masterminding of this diabolical attack
will soon come to light.
To that end, we particularly commend you, Mr. President, for your
decision to open the classified report by Argentina's Secretariat
of State Intelligence (known by its Spanish acronym, "SIDE") on
the attacks, and to allow SIDE officials to testify at the trial.
The troubling picture of extensive collaboration between the
Iranian government and Hezbollah reportedly detailed in the SIDE
files merits further investigation by appropriate authorities. It
is essential that we combine clarity with vigilance in order to
meet the grave threat of international terrorism in our Hemisphere
and throughout the world. Your contribution to this effort, so
early in your term, is noteworthy. The United States Congress will
continue to monitor the trial closely and support your efforts to
hold those responsible accountable for their actions.
We look forward to meeting with you when you visit Washington and
working with you on this and other issues that will strengthen the
deep bond between our two nations.
Sincerely,
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