JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel denied a claim by one of its former ambassadors that it has killed most of those responsible for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community building in Buenos Aires.
On Saturday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement dismissed the claim by Yitzhak Aviran, the envoy to Argentina from 1993 to 2000.
“The statements by former ambassador Aviran, who has been in retirement for some 15 years, are completely disconnected from reality,” the ministry said. “These remarks, made on no authority nor knowledge, are pure fantasy and do not reflect in any way events or facts such as he pretends to depict.”
Aviran made the claim in an interview published Jan. 2 by the Jewish News Agency, or AJN, a Spanish-language service.
“The vast majority of the guilty parties are in another world, and this is something we did,” Aviran said without specifying their identities or how they were killed.
Eighty-five people died in the 1994 suicide bombing at the multistory AMIA building and hundreds more were wounded.
Aviran arrived in Buenos Aires the year before the attack and a year after a car bomb in front of the Israeli Embassy in the city killed 29 and wounded 200.
“Israel continues to cooperate in full transparency with Argentina in investigating the bombings which took place in Buenos Aires against the Embassy of Israel (1992) and the AMIA Jewish Community Center (1994),” the ministry’s statement added.
Buenos Aires Prosecutor Alberto Nisman told The Associated Press that he will ask the Israeli and Argentine governments to order an Israeli judge to make Aviran explain who was killed and what proof he has of the assassinations.
