BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Argentina seized five Iranian properties in the Buenos Aires area.
Justice Minister Alberto Nisman, who is in charge of the special unit investigating the 1994 AMIA Jewish community center bombing, ordered the seizure Tuesday.
Nisman said the new property seizure, along with six other Iranian properties last October, will meet the demands of attack victims’ relatives and survivors. If the Iranian owner of the property is found guilty of the attack, his property will be sold and the money givien to the survivors of the victims.
An unidentified survivor who was severely injured in the July 1994 terrorist attack on the Buenos Aires center is demanding $1 million in reparations in a civil action. The survivor alleges that the attack was planned by former leaders of the Iranian government and carried out by the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah.
“The Islamic Iranian Republic as well as the Hezbollah terrorist organization are completely responsible for the damages to the life, physical integrity, health and goods of the 85 people who died and the more than 200 injured," Nisman told the local Jewish news agency.
The American Jewish Committee praised the seizure.
“We applaud Special Prosecutor Alberto Nisman for his persistence, and welcome this step forward on the long journey toward justice for the victims’ families,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris. “For those who still harbor illusions about the nature of the Iranian government, we are reminded once again that it plotted and perpetrated this act of anti-Semitic mass murder.”
