Holocaust-expert judge takes on Argentine bombing case

Argentina - AFP - Feb. 4th 2015 - A respected Holocaust expert was named Wednesday to take over as judge in the politically explosive case of a 1994 Jewish center bombing that has shaken Argentina since the lead prosecutor’s mysterious death. 


The case had become a hot potato in the courts amid revelations that late prosecutor Alberto Nisman had drafted an arrest warrant for President Cristina Kirchner before he was found dead in his apartment with a gunshot wound to the head last month. 
Three judges had asked to recuse themselves from the case, which has gripped Argentina since Nisman, 51, turned up dead on the eve of a congressional hearing at which he was expected to accuse Kirchner of covering up Iranian officials’ involvement in the deadly bombing. It was the worst terror strike on Argentine soil in the country’s modern history. 
The federal authority for criminal courts finally ended the impasse by ordering one of the three judges, Daniel Rafecas, to take on the case. 
Around 2, 000 people meanwhile rallied behind a banner that read 'enough impunity' as they marched through Buenos Aires, calling for answers. 
'I think we will end up with the truth,' said Argentine Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel, who marched at the head of the crowd, calling for an investigation by an independent commission. 
According to polls, some 70 percent of the population believe they will never know the truth behind Nisman’s death. 
Rafecas, a human rights expert, has authored studies on the Holocaust that earned him awards from three Argentine Jewish groups: B’nai B’rith Argentina, the Argentine Jewish Society and the Buenos Aires Holocaust Museum Foundation. 
He is also known for trying military officers for abuses committed during the South American country’s 1976-1983 dictatorship. 
The bombing at the Argentine Jewish center known as AMIA, killed 85 people and wounded 300, the deadliest such attack in Argentina’s history. 
After the initial investigation ended with no convictions, Nisman was named in 2006 to reopen the case. 
He accused Iran of ordering the attack via Lebanon-backed militant group Hezbollah, and requested arrest warrants for five Iranian officials including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. 
On January 14, four days before he was found dead, Nisman filed a 300-page report accusing Kirchner, foreign minister Hector Timerman and another senior official of trying to shield the Iranian suspects in exchange for oil.

Obama Meets Muslim Leaders to Address Internal and External Challenges

WASHINGTON – U.S. President Barack Obama has met his country’s Muslim leaders to discuss a range of national and foreign policy issues.

Health reform, violence and discrimination against Muslims, the White House summit on extremism and the fight against the jihadists of the Islamic State were some of the matters discussed, the White House said in a statement Wednesday after the meeting.

“The president reiterated his administration’s commitment to safeguarding civil rights through hate crimes prosecutions and civil enforcement actions,” the release said.

Obama also expressed the need to keep up the fight against the IS and other terrorist groups that “commit horrific acts of violence, purportedly in the name of Islam,” the statement added.

The president used the occasion to highlight the “major contributions” of Muslim Americans to the nation and encouraged the leaders of this community to continue being involved in civil society

Iran News in Brief, 4 February 2015

Blogger's note : Iran and Cleric's comment

Hold on , Iran regime has called for the " Execution " of anyone at home or abroad who opposes the clerical regime?

Openly calling for terrorism abroad, Kayhan wrote ?   ( What the heck ) ???

I am missing something here,  and they want nuclear weapon's ?   (  Oh my God )

Iran calls for execution of "anyone who questions their cleric's " ?

Iran regime has called for the execution of anyone at home and abroad who opposes the clerical regime.

Iranian daily paper Kayhan - the mouthpiece of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei - said those deemed 'corrupt on earth' should be 'harshly, severely and humiliatingly punished and killed'.

Openly calling for terrorism abroad, Kayhan wrote: "Carrying out the sentence of God against them is not restricted to any time or place and should be carried out even if they have escaped the country.

"Those who fabricate news and spread rumors threaten society and the Islamic system with psychological warfare, and much like the Monafeqin (Regime’s derogatory name for its main opposition, the PMOI), they damage Islamic society from within.

"Those political currents and media that disseminate rumors should be suppressed and annihilated. They are corrupters of the earth and spilling their blood is permitted. They may no longer be safe in their lives and the people must banish them and not allow them to have any links with Islamic society. They should be harshly, severely and humiliatingly punished and killed."

The paper continued: "Carrying out the sentence of God on the seditionists who fight the truth is not restricted to any time, place or border and the passage of time does not affect it. They should have no safe haven. Thus, seditionists who escape outside the country should not be spared. Moreover, all people should join in to arrest them."

But Kayhan also acknowledged the 'feeble and unstable state' of the mullahs' regime and admitted to its fear of any kind of freedom of expression and the 'role of the media in creating instability'.

It added: "Those who disseminate rumors cause fear and anxiety in society and through their fabrications create instability."

The Mullahs' Caliphate in Iran as the godfather of ISIS and terrorism under the veneer of Islam distort the Koran's verses to create terror and fear amongst dissidents inside and outside the country without recognizing any borders.

The Iranian Resistance draws the attention of the international community and all international bodies in defense of human rights and those countering terrorism to confront the Iranian regime’s new wave of suppressive measures and its calls for terrorism inside the country and abroad.

Barbaric murder of Japanese citizens by ISIS

The Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) condemns the brutal and abhorrent killing of the Japanese journalist Kenji Goto and Haruna Yukawa by the ISIS terrorist group and expresses its condolences and sympathy to their family members.

This anti-Islamic and inhumane act that has tarnished the dignity of contemporary humanity, more than ever underscores the need for a firm regional and international policy against the extremism and fundamentalism under the cover of religion.

Terrorism and fundamentalism under the name of Islam is an ominous phenomenon which has turned to a global threat in contemporary history.

This phenomenon neither rose accidentally nor expanded spontaneously. It was only through the existence of a terror-sponsoring regime; the Velayat-e faqih (absolute clerical rule) in Iran, that Islamic fundamentalism was able to transform itself into a global threat.

Without the current regime in Iran, these forces would not have mustered such potential and prospects to emerge as destructive political forces.

Major crimes by the Iranian regime's Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) and its affiliated terrorists in Iraq and Syria, and the massacres of the people in both these countries allowed for the growth of groups such as ISIS, who have diverted the people's resistance against dictatorship to the benefit of Iranian regime’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Bashar al-Assad.

The eviction of the Iranian regime from the countries of the region, particularly from Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon, is the first necessary step into ending such terror and horror in the Middle East and the world.

Argentine Official Rips Up Newspaper at Press Conference

Jorge Capitanich ripped up the front page of Clarin newspapFernandez

er, reacting to the publication of a story claiming that prosecutor Alberto Nisman had sought the arrest of President Cristina 

BUENOS AIRES – The Argentine Cabinet chief on Monday ripped up the front page of Clarin newspaper at his daily session with the media, reacting to the publication of a story – since debunked – claiming that a prosecutor found fatally shot Jan. 18 had sought the arrest of President Cristina Fernandez.

After shredding two pages from Clarin’s Sunday edition, Jorge Capitanich spoke of “a political confrontation hatched from the opposition media.”

“This is how it’s going to be. It will be a very active dynamic in this electoral year,” the Cabinet chief said, alluding to the October 2015 election to choose a successor to the term-limited Fernandez.

Clarin, Argentina’s largest-circulation daily, reported on a draft document found in the trash at the apartment of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who announced a few days before his death that he planned to seek indictments against Fernandez and other officials for trying to conceal involvement of Iran in a deadly 1994 terrorist attack on a Jewish organization in Buenos Aires.

The draft, which had many portions crossed out, requested the arrest of the president in connection with Nisman’s probe of the car-bomb attack that left 85 dead at the offices of the Jewish organization AMIA, according to the newspaper.

Within hours of the publication of the story, the judge overseeing the case, Ariel Lijo, denied Clarin’s account and said the document included “no substantial motion” from Nisman regarding the prospective defendants.

Nisman, 51, was found fatally shot hours before he was supposed to brief Argentina’s Congress about his accusations against Fernandez, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman and five other people.

The prosecutor died of a single shot to the temple, fired at point-blank range from a .22-caliber pistol that was found under his body in the bathroom of his apartment.

Investigators have designated the case as a “suspicious death.”

Nisman, who had a 10-person police security detail, borrowed the gun from a colleague.

Laboratory analysis determined “categorically” that all of the DNA found on the gun, ammunition cartridge, bullets and shell-casings belonged to Nisman, the prosecutor heading the probe, Viviana Fein, said last Friday.

The charges against Fernandez and Timerman were based on intercepts of telephone conversations about efforts “to erase Iran from the AMIA case,” Nisman’s office said Jan. 14 in a statement.

The government wanted to eliminate any obstacle to forging closer trade and economic ties with Tehran, the prosecutor said.

Timerman – himself a member of Argentina’s Jewish community – reacted angrily to the accusations, labeling Nisman a liar and saying that the prosecutor allowed himself to be unduly influenced by Antonio “Jaime” Stiuso, recently fired as chief of operations for the intelligence service.

On Monday, a lawmaker filed a criminal complaint against Stiuso and four other intelligence officials for illegal enrichment.

The spies used a firm called American Tape and several subsidiaries to launder money, legislator Gustavo Vera said.

With each earning a monthly salary of 15,000 pesos ($1,700), it is “absolutely impossible” that the accused can justify the expansion of American Tape’s declared capital from $690 to $690,000 in the course of 2013, Vera said.

The graft allegations against Stiuso arose from an investigation by Vera’s Alameda Foundation of a human-trafficking racket allegedly run by former spy Raul Martins.

Stiuso joined the intelligence service during the 1976-1983 military regime, but managed to keep his job and rise through the ranks under successive democratic governments.

Fernandez’s late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner, originally assigned Stiuso to collaborate with Nisman’s probe of the AMIA attack.

The Fernandez administration’s 2013 signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran to facilitate the investigation led to a breach between the president, on one side, and Nisman and Stiuso on the other.

Many in the Argentine Jewish community believe the AMIA bombing was ordered by Iran and carried out by Tehran’s Hezbollah allies.

Both the Iranian government and the Lebanese militia group deny any involvement and some have pointed out that the accusation relies heavily on information provided by the CIA and Israel’s Mossad spy agency, both with an interest in blackening the reputation of Tehran.

Prosecutors have yet to secure a single conviction in the case.

In September 2004, 22 people accused in the bombing were acquitted after a process plagued with delays, irregularities and tales of witnesses’ being paid for their testimony.

The attack against the AMIA building was the second terrorist strike against Jewish targets in Argentina. In March 1992, a car bomb was detonated in front of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people and wounding more than 100 others.