BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) – The anti-terrorist unit of Argentina’s Federal Police arrested in Buenos Aires two Iranian citizens that entered the country with fake Israeli passports.
Sajjad Samiel Naserani, 27, and Mashoreh Sabzali, 30, were arrested on Friday and are being investigated for possible terrorist activity. They had traveled from Spain and entered Argentina on Tuesday through Ezeiza International Airport under the false Israeli identities of Netanel Toledano and Rivka Toledano.
The border control alerted police that the numbers of their passports were reported as stolen in Israel. Israeli police confirmed that the passport numbers belonged to Israeli citizens David Assouline and Brigitte Assouline, a French-Israel couple who were in Israel at the time and had reported their passports as stolen.
The false passports included Hebrew spelling mistakes.
The investigation in Argentina led by Judge Luis Rodriguez also found that the pair left Spain with different passports and different identities than those used to enter Argentina.
Based on the information provided by Israeli and Spanish police, Rodriguez ordered their arrests on Friday by the counter-terrorism division of Argentina’s federal intelligence agency, AFI.
According to Argentina’s Justice Department, Iran is behind two major terrorist attacks on Jewish targets in Buenos Aires: the AMIA Jewish center in 1994, which killed 85; and the Israeli embassy on March 17, 1992, which killed 29.
The national border patrol, or Gendameria Nacional, the Federal Police, the Buenos Aires Police, and airport security police were ordered by Rodriguez to go on high alert, Clarin reported.
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
