BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — Argentine police arrested a man suspected of planning to attack a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
Argentina’s national security secretary, Sergio Berni, said Wednesday that police received an alert a week ago from Interpol of a possible plot to attack the Sociedad Hebraica.
The suspect, 57, was arrested Tuesday at an Internet cafe in Buenos Aires by the Anti-Terrorist Division of the Federal Police.
Berni declined to provide additional details other than to say that 1,500 security personnel had been deployed to 99 sites in the last week, which coincided with the Jewish High Holidays season. After a threat posted on Facebook last week, the Sociedad Hebraica was evacuated on the night of Oct. 2 and was closed the following day for security reasons.
“We are very satisfied by the actions of the police and the Justice Ministry in this case,” Julio Schlosser, the president of Argentina’s political umbrella group, DAIA, told Argentine media.
Buenos Aires was the site of two major attacks on Jewish sites in the 1990s. A 1992 attack on the Israeli Embassy killed 29. The 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center left 85 dead.
