Pat Dollard | Young Americans

It’s about time. The 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish Community center killed 85 people.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina - Iran’s top diplomat says the U.S. and Israel are pressuring Interpol to put five Iranians and one Lebanese on its most wanted list next week for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people.

But the lead prosecutor in Argentina’s worst terror attack says the case is not political. Prosecutors say they have enough evidence for Interpol’s 186-member general assembly to approve “red notices” for the six suspects during a meeting that opens Monday in Marrakech, Morocco.

There have been no convictions 13 years after an explosives-laden van leveled the seven-story Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.

Argentine prosecutors allege Iranian officials orchestrated the bombing and entrusted the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah to carry it out.

Mohsen Baharvand, Iran’s top diplomat in Argentina, insisted the Iranians were not involved in the attack and accused the United States and Israel of using the case as a political weapon against Iran.

“They try to bother Iran for many reasons,” Baharvand told The Associated Press “They try to politicize the technical organizations in every corner of the world against Iran.”

A red notice means a suspect is wanted for possible extradition. While it does not force countries to arrest or extradite suspects, people with red-notice status appear on Interpol’s equivalent of a most-wanted list.

The July 18, 1994 attack struck hard at Argentina’s 200,000-member Jewish community, Latin America’s largest. It came just two years after a bombing that shattered Israel’s embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29.

Among the suspects wanted by Argentina are former Iranian intelligence chief Ali Fallahian, former leader of the elite Revolutionary Guards Mohsen Rezaei, and Hezbollah militant Imad Moughnieh, one of the world’s most sought-after terror suspects.

Moughnieh is wanted for his alleged role in the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon in the 1980s, and suicide attacks on the U.S. Embassy and a Marine base in Lebanon that killed more than 260 Americans. His whereabouts are unknown.

Interpol denied Argentina’s request for red notices for former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani, as well as the country’s former foreign minister and ambassador to Buenos Aires.

“They should come and testify here if they say they are innocent,” said Adriana Resfield, whose 35-year-old sister was killed in the bombing. “So far they have refused to come and that raises even more suspicions.”

Full AP article by Bill Cormier here.