Maryam Rajavi, the President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, has sent a message to Pope Francis, requesting his intervention in preventing a blackout of the 1994 terrorist bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires.
The 1994 bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history. When a car bomb went off outside the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), it brought down the seven-story building, killing 85 people.
On January 18, 2015, Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment with a single bullet wound to the head. He had been investigating the 1994 bombing and was due to appear before Congress to give details of controversial allegations made against President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman.
Nisman accused Fernandez and Timerman of conspiracy to cover up Iran’s alleged involvement in the bombing. In 2006, he declared that the attack was carried out by Hezbollah militants, and he formally charged Iranian officials with directing it.
Nisman recently said that the Argentinian government wanted to absolve Iran to preserve commercial relations, exchanging Argentinian grain for Iranian oil.
His death occurred just hours before he was scheduled to testify before Congress, which spawned fevered speculation regarding the nature of his demise.
Now Maryam Rajavi of the Iranian Resistance has called on Pope Francis to wield his influence so that the case is not buried.
According to Rajavi, indifference toward the murder of Judge Nisman “emboldens the religious fascism ruling Iran and its affiliated terrorist gangs to perpetrate further crimes and assassinations.”
Rajavi claimed that Nisman had received death threats and that he had told his daughter she may lose her father at some point.
She also said that representatives of the Iranian Resistance had obtained significant information on the role of Iran in the bombing of AMIA and had “provided that information to an Argentinian judge at that country’s embassy in Paris.”
“As such,” Rajavi wrote, “we can only think of Your Holiness and your intervention to prevent justice and truth from being sacrificed.”
Rajavi further said that as archbishop of Buenos Aires in 2005, Francis “did not tolerate the fact that out of political expediency and commercial interests this dossier was being shelved” and “called for transparent investigations into that horrific crime.”
Rajavi concludes, imploring Pope Francis “to intervene and not allow this crime against humanity [to] remain behind a cloak of secrecy and without accountability.”
“Your Holiness’ intervention would certainly be comforting to the late Judge Nisman, to all innocent victims of AMIA, and to those subjected to oppression,” she said.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter @tdwilliamsrome.
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