MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Interpol “red notices” for six Iranians wanted by Argentina

The 1994 bombing of AMIA remais unsolved

Interpol rejected Wednesday a request by the government of Iran to drop arrest warrants against six leading Iranians, wanted by Argentina for their alleged role in a 1994 bombing that killed 85 people and left hundreds injured.

Delegates at the world police body's annual general assembly in Morocco voted by a two-thirds majority to uphold a unanimous decision taken in March by Interpol's executive committee to issue "red notices" against the five. Of the 146 member states attending the gathering, 78 voted to uphold Interpol's earlier decision, 14 voted against it and 26 formally abstained. The list of arrest warrants includes Iran's former intelligence chief Ali Fallahian; the former head of the country's Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rezaei; Cultural Attaché in the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires Mohsen Rabbani; Third secretary Ahmad Ashgari; head of QUDS forces Ahmad Vahidi and Imad Moughnieh, head of foreign operations from the Lebanon located Hezbollah movement. "I am very satisfied with the resolution," Argentina's chief prosecutor Alberto Nisman told reporters after the vote. "This shows that even after 13 years have passed, one can fight for justice with the tools that the law provides to fight terrorism," he added. The July 1994 bombing leveled the seven-floor Argentine Israeli Mutual Association building in Buenos Aires, a symbol of Argentina's Jewish community which is the largest in Latin America. Argentine prosecutors allege Teheran masterminded the bombing in Buenos Aires and entrusted Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to execute it. Iran blames its enemies, the US and Israel, for trying to implicate it in the bombing. "Politics overruled the rule of justice. It was not a vote for justice, it was a political vote," said the director of the international law department of Iran's ministry of foreign affairs, Alireza Deihim. In November 2006 Argentine prosecutors issued arrest warrants against eight Iranians, including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and former foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati. But in March Interpol's executive committee withdrew its warrants against three of them, including Rafsanjani and Velayati, but kept them in place for five others. The New York-based World Jewish Congress welcomed the decision to uphold the arrest warrants. "This is a victory for the people of Argentina and for all those seeking to build a global community based on the rule of law and free from fear and intimidation" said the Jewish Congress president Ronald Lauder in a statement.