MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine prosecutor wants Iran's supreme leader arrested

The prosecutor also argued that Khamenei has no immunity from international arrest

Argentine Prosecutor Sebastián Basso has filed a request before Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas for an international arrest warrant against Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei for his alleged involvement in ordering the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) headquarters in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and injured over 300.

The successor of late Prosecutor Alberto Nisman also seeks to try Khamenei and nine other Iranian suspects -including former officials and diplomats (namely Ali Fallahijan, Ali Akbar Velayati, Mohsen Rezai, Ahmad Vahidi, Hadi Soleimanpour, Moshen Rabbani, Ahmad Reza Asghari, Salman Raouf Salman, Abdallah Salman, and Hussein Mounir Mouzannar)- in absentia for the attack believed to have been carried out by the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Basso contends that Khamenei participated in a 1993 meeting in Mashad, Iran, alongside then President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani (now deceased), Foreign Minister Velayati, and Information Minister Fallahijan to give the go-ahead. Khamenei reportedly issued a fatwa (a legal opinion or decree handed down by an Islamic religious leader) enabling it.

The prosecutor also argued that Khamenei has no immunity from international arrest. He had already been identified in 2006 by Nisman as the mastermind behind the mass killing.

Rafecas' decision might set a precedent since trials in absentia were approved by Congress only a month ago.

“The sponsorship of Hezbollah's armed struggle outside Lebanon by the political organization that governs the destinies of Iran was, and continues to be, the main support of this criminal association,” the prosecutor wrote.

Khamenei became Iran's second supreme leader in 1989 after serving as president between 1981 and 1989.