Former Investigator to 'Tell All' about Jewish Centre Bombing Marcela Valente http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=28967 BUENOS AIRES, Jun 6 (IPS) - A former investigator of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in the Argentine capital, in which 85 people were killed and hundreds were injured, said he would reveal everything he knows about the terrorist attack and the alleged cover-up. Criminal lawyer Claudio Lifschitz, a former federal police intelligence agent, was named chief investigator to federal Judge Juan José Galeano in 1995 in the investigation of the attack on the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA). No one has yet been convicted in connection with the bombing. Lifschitz worked with Galeano until 1997, when he resigned. In 2000 he accused the judge of taking part in a cover-up by the government of Carlos Menem (1989-1999) designed to steer the case into a dead-end alley. Galeano has since been removed from the case. The investigation, now in the hands of prosecuting Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, points in the direction of members of the pro-Iranian Lebanese militia Hezbollah, which also has support from Syria, and diplomats from Iran, who are facing arrest warrants issued in connection with the case nearly a decade ago. >From the very start, the investigators believed the attack was carried out with local logistical support, which may have come from Argentine security bodies. The probe focused in that direction over the past decade, until it turned into a complete fiasco, fraught with irregularities and outright crimes committed by people involved in the investigation. According to Lifschitz, the State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE) was able to infiltrate Iranian ”sleeper cells” in Argentina months before the attack. SIDE thus found out about plans to bomb the AMIA building, and decided to mount a ”controlled operation” in which it even ”provided logistical support for the attack”, with the idea of aborting at the last moment, Lifschitz told IPS. But things ”got out of hand,” he added. Lifschitz said he got that information from ”a high-level official” in the Menem administration, whose identity and full account of events he plans to reveal in court. Lawyer Pablo Jacoby, who represents the families of victims of the AMIA blast linked in the group Active Memory, told IPS that he believes Lifschitz's version ”could be true,” and noted that so far, all of the information provided by the former investigator has proven to be accurate. ”It's true that he was a police intelligence agent, but that doesn't discredit him,” said Jacoby. ”On the contrary: he doesn't deny it, and we know he qualified for the position as Galeano's chief investigator because he knew about police intelligence matters.” Lifschitz's testimony was a key factor in the trial of a group of former Buenos Aires province police officers and a mechanic, Carlos Telleldín, who was accused of fitting out the vehicle used as a car bomb to blow up the AMIA building. But in 2004, the court ordered the release of the suspects, and an investigation of Galeano and other officials, on charges of taking part in a cover-up. The case against those tried by Galeano was thrown out because of the large number of irregularities, the most serious of which was the payment of 400,000 dollars to Telleldín's family in exchange for his testimony accusing the former police officers of receiving the car-bomb vehicle from him. During the trial, SIDE agents admitted to providing the money for bribing Telleldín to testify against the police officers. Active Memory was the only organisation of victims' families that backed the court verdict that freed Telleldín and the police - not because the group believed they were innocent, but because it rejected the cover-up mounted by Galeano, Menem administration officials and leaders of Argentina's Jewish community (the largest in Latin America). Lifschitz had testified that Galeano began to pursue the police involvement angle after a meeting with then interior minister Carlos Corach. After that meeting, ”anything that contradicted Telleldín's testimony was ignored or removed from the file,” said the former investigator. For example, Galeano disregarded strong leads, like the so-called ”Syrian connection”, he said. In addition, a textile factory owner, Jacinto Kanoore Edul, of Syrian descent, was arrested in 1994. His phone number had appeared in Telleldín's address book, and he was suspected of helping to prepare the car bomb. But Edul was released for ”lack of merit” after a phone call to Galeano's office from Munir Menem, the brother of then president Menem - who is also of Syrian origin - asking about Kanoore Edul. A year later, Lifschitz found the name and telephone number of another suspect in the date book confiscated from Kanoore Edul. The suspect was Moshe Rabbani, cultural attaché in the Iranian Embassy, for whom an international arrest warrant was issued for his alleged participation in the bombing. Lifschitz's accusation against Galeano gave rise to a second legal case. In 2000, federal Judge Gustavo Bonadío launched an ”investigation of the investigation,” examining the improper conduct and irregularities committed by the judge and other officials. But the case made little headway. After he was repeatedly reprimanded for failing to make progress in the investigation, Bonadío decided to summon 37 legal and political officials to testify in court, a process that will continue until mid-August. They include Galeano, prosecutors, several former government ministers - and Lifschitz himself, who is now facing charges. ”It's crazy that they're holding me responsible when I was the one who got the investigation going in the first place,” Lifschitz told IPS. The former agent first plans to challenge Bonadío, because of the judge's known ties to former minister Corach, one of those suspected of taking part in the cover-up. The Anti-Corruption Office and the AMIA Investigation Unit set up by the Justice Ministry under the current administration of President Néstor Kirchner had questioned Bonadío for the same reasons. ”So far I have only told 60 percent of what I know, because as a witness I had everyone against me. But now that I have been summoned to testify as one of the accused, I'm going to tell all, and not as a hypothesis, but with concrete evidence of how the attack was carried out and how it was covered up afterwards,” he said. (END/2005) All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. FAIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. 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