MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentina declassifies intelligence report on AMIA bombing

The Toma Report was named after the SIDE “Señor 5” under President Eduardo Duhalde

Argentina's judiciary Wednesday declassified a confidential intelligence report dated in 2003 which delved into Iran's role in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) headquarters in Buenos Aires.

The document drafted by Argentina's former SIDE (State's Intelligence Secretariat) together with the CIA, the Israeli Mossad, and the FBI focuses on the involvement of then-Iranian cultural attaché Moshen Rabbani in the plot leading to the attack that killed 85 people and how Iran asked the terrorist group Hezbollah to carry it out.

Back in the day, the so-called Toma Report had been submitted to then-Federal Judge Juan José Galeano, who was handling the investigation. The document had been named after then “Señor 5” (SIDE Chief) Miguel Ángel Toma, who had been appointed to the post by President Eduardo Duhalde.

“Subject: AMIA, the international connection. The clarification of the terrorist attack and the individualization of its perpetrators,” reads the report.

On Wednesday Federal Judge Ariel Lijo, who is currently in charge of the case, declassified the report but not the complementary material since it contains names of informants who would be in danger if they were made public. Lijo is President Javier Milei's candidate to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court.

According to the report, the motive for the attack perpetrated by Hezbollah was former President Carlos Menem's decision to suspend the shipment to Iran of a pilot uranium purification developed by the company INVAP.

The study contains precise information on the functioning of Iran's espionage system and the companies used as cover, among other points, such as the role of Rabbani, who arrived in Argentina in the 1980s allegedly to work in the meat business when his actual goal was to “look for opportunities” against potential targets of Israeli and US origin.

Rabbani became regional head of the Islamic Propaganda Organization in Latin America and previously was part of the Intelligence bureau of Ayatollah Khomeini, with close links to Hezbollah.

Regarding former Iranian Ambassador Hadi Soleimanpour, the report states that he had three different identities and two diplomatic passports with different numbers, while Samuel El Reda was singled out as the man who headed the groups behind the attacks on the AMIA headquarters in 1994 and the Israeli Embassy in 1992.

He had married an Argentine member of the Sain family and set up an electronics sales business in Ciudad del Este called “Castello Branco”. Later on, a brother of El Reda, who married another of the Sain sisters, was linked to Hezbollah companies in Brazil, one of which was accused of participating in the arms business.

About Rabbani, the document says he was “the central axis of the Iranian expansion” in Argentina with a “radicalized discourse of the revolution”, having achieved “the articulation between the diplomats, the religious factor and the intelligence” of Iran. Part of this work was done by surrounding himself with members of the Sain and Assad families.

Regarding the AMIA bombing, the report states that a group of Hezbollah was in charge of bringing the explosives, while another group was linked to the assembly of the car bomb in what was called a “safe house”. Once ready, it was handed over to alleged suicide driver Ibrahim Hussein Berro, while a third group was in charge of cleaning up after the operation.

The report also states that it was possible to establish “the centimeters of fundamentalist terrorist activity, the various forms of criminal participation and the structure of a matrix whose nucleus is found in the very heart of the fundamentalist regime of Iran”, while Hezbollah was “its armed wing.”