Buenos Aires, October 02: Former Argentine president Carlos Menem was on Thursday charged with leading a cover-up in the 1994 bombing of a building housing Jewish charities that killed 85 people.
Some 300 people were also wounded in the attack that levelled the seven-floor Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires. No one has ever been convicted for the bombing.
Federal Judge Ariel Lijo charged Menem, 79, with “instigating” several crimes, including concealing and tampering with evidence and abusing authority to cover up what was then called a “Syrian connection”.
Menem, who is involved in several corruption and arms smuggling cases linked to his 1989-1999 presidency, enjoys congressional immunity shielding him from any arrest as senator from his home province of La Rioja.
Prosecutor Alberto Nisman asked Lijo last May to indict Menem and his former officials, accusing them of “aggravated concealment” of a “local connection” that provided the logistics to carry out the attack.
Nisman alleged that Menem, who was born in Argentina to Syrian immigrants, and his former staff stole evidence to hide the involvement of Syrian-Argentine businessman Alberto Kanoore Edul in the AMIA bombing, and destroyed evidence that would have incriminated him.
–Agencies