MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine Supreme Court says CFK must stand trial for AMIA bombing cover-up

CFK is believed to have covered up for the Iranian suspects in the AMIA bombing

Argentina's Supreme Court (CSJN) ruled Thursday that former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) and others should stand trial for signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Iran, thus upholding a previous decision by a Federal Court of Appeals.

The MOU allegedly sought to involve the Islamic country in friendly cooperation with the probe into the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) headquarters in Buenos Aires but it ended up a shield for suspects from that country believed to be involved in the attack that killed over 80 people and left some 300 others wounded.

The CSJN turned down all extraordinary appeals from the defense, thus clearing the way for the case to move forward to the trial stage after a Court of Appeals revoked in September the acquittals of all the defendants and ordered the complaint filed by the late Prosecutor Alberto Nisman to go through. CFK is accused of covering up the AMIA bombing.

The case began in January 2015 with the complaint filed by Nisman, in which he argued that the signing of the memorandum between Argentina and Iran sought to cover up for the Iranian AMIA bombing suspects because it resulted in the lifting of all Interpol red alerts for their arrest.

Federal Oral Court 8 acquitted in October 2021 all the defendants for non-existence of crime. “The Memorandum, regardless of whether it is considered a political success or failure, did not constitute a crime,” said judges Gabriela López Iñiguez, José Michilini, and Daniel Obligado. That ruling prompted several appeals.

In its decision Thursday, the CSJN spoke of “arbitrariness” and “institutional gravity,” which “is linked to the transcendence of the appealed judgment and, in its case, to the unpostponable need for this Court to make a declaration on the point under discussion. Not every decision issued in a case of transcendence is in itself transcendent, nor does it have institutional gravity.”

“Chamber I of the Federal Chamber of Criminal Cassation held that the criminal hypothesis postulated by the accusations was not reduced to the subscription of an international treaty, but that such circumstance should be assessed in conjunction with the negotiations carried out through 'parallel channels' to the functional channels and which conveyed the illicit purpose sustained by the accusations, consisting of providing impunity to the Iranian citizens attributed with the attack on the A.M.I.A.,” the CSJN added.