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VOA – Argentinian judicial authorities seeking to prosecute officials suspected of covering up Iran\u2019s alleged role in a 1994 Buenos Aires terrorist attack have suffered another setback with the death of a judge who led the legal battle against those officials. Judge Claudio Bonadio, head of Argentina\u2019s No.11 Federal Criminal and Correctional Court, died Tuesday at the age of 64, after undergoing surgery for a brain tumor last year. Bonadio had spent years building a case against Argentinian officials who approved a controversial 2013 memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran. He had gathered evidence alleging the MOU was part of an illicit deal for Buenos Aires to shield Iranian suspects in the 1994 attack from justice in return for securing oil and other economic benefits from Tehran.<\/p>\n
The July 18, 1994, suicide car bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association Jewish community center in the Argentine capital killed 85 people. It remains Latin America\u2019s deadliest terrorist attack.<\/p>\n
In the following years, Argentinian judicial authorities accused Lebanese militant group Hezbollah of carrying out the attack on the order of Iranian officials. Iran and Hezbollah have denied involvement and refused to send any suspects named by Argentina to stand trial there.<\/p>\n
Bonadio had taken up the investigation of the Argentinian officials who approved the MOU with Iran after an earlier setback in the case: the January 2015 death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman.<\/p>\n
Nisman had initiated the investigation of the MOU approved by then-Argentinian President Cristina Fern\u00e1ndez de Kirchner, and was hours away from presenting his evidence of a cover-up to the Argentinian Congress when he was found dead in his home of a gunshot to the head. Kirchner said he committed suicide, but a 2017 report by the Argentine National Gendarmerie, a domestic security force, said he had been murdered. Nisman\u2019s death remains an unresolved legal matter in Argentina.<\/p>\n
Kirchner, who served two terms as president from 2007 to 2015, returned to high office as Argentinian vice president in December, winning election as the running mate of President Alberto Fern\u00e1ndez (no relation) after she served two years as a senator.<\/p>\n
The 2013 MOU with Iran had called for a bilateral commission to conduct a new joint investigation of the AMIA bombing, years after Argentinian judicial authorities had issued arrest warrants and secured Interpol red notices asking for international help in detaining and extraditing the Hezbollah militants and Iranian officials wanted in connection with the attack.<\/p>\n
Argentinian critics of the MOU, incensed by Nisman\u2019s allegations that it was part of a cover-up, succeeded in getting a court to rule it unconstitutional in 2015 and it was never implemented.<\/p>\n
Bonadio, who continued Nisman\u2019s work on the MOU case after the prosecutor\u2019s death, had charged Kirchner and her aides with treason and obstruction of justice in 2017. He also had been pursuing multiple corruption cases against the former president in recent years in relation to her presidential tenure.<\/p>\n
Kirchner consistently has denied wrongdoing and accused the judge of waging a personal vendetta against her.<\/p>\n
Bonadio had last worked Dec. 30, after which he had taken vacation in January, his secretary M\u00f3nica Mica told VOA by phone. Sometime before Dec. 30, he had handed the central part of the MOU case to the No. 8 Criminal Federal Tribunal, judicial official Rodriguez Varela confirmed, also in a VOA phone interview. The tribunal is a body that decides, after analyzing the investigating judge\u2019s evidence, whether to hold a trial and issue a verdict.<\/p>\n