BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) – A group of relatives and friends of victims of the Buenos Aires Jewish center bombing will hold separate commemorations of the attack’s 20th anniversary.
Events memorializing the 85 people killed in the July 18, 1994 attack on the AMIA center will be held by the organized Jewish community and by a group called Active Memory, made up of relatives and friends of the bombing victims. Active Memory disagrees with the way the judicial case against the alleged bombers is being handled.
“For the first time we will hold a ceremony at the same time as the main Jewish institutions because they don’t protect us, don’t share our pain and neither our claim of justice,” Active Memory said in a statement released Thursday. The group said that over the last 20 years, AMIA and the DAIA Jewish umbrella “have defended those accused of covering up” the case.
At 9:53 a.m. Friday, the moment 20 years ago that the attack took place, a public ceremony will be held in front of the rebuilt AMIA building.
In addition, the American Jewish Committee’s Latino and Latin American Institute is holding a commemorative event for the AMIA bombing in Miami at Beth Torah Benny Rock Campus. Argentine Ambassador Miguel Talento and the general consul of Israel, Chaim Shacham, are scheduled to participate.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Argentine Federal Judge Ariel Lijo, who investigated irregularities in the first investigation of the AMIA bombing, called the president of the Buenos Aires Criminal Cassation Court, Federico Dominguez, to testify in the criminal investigation into alleged cover-ups in the case. Dominguez was the attorney for one of the police officers accused in the original investigation of the bombing.
Lijo reportedly suspects that Dominguez pressured his client to lie in order to incriminate other police officers.
Due to irregularities in the investigation, the court in 2004 annulled the investigation and released all the suspects being held.
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