Menem 'bribed by Iran' over anti-Jewish bombing
Relatives of former Argentinean president Carlos Menem today denied claims that Iran bribed him to cover up a 1994 anti-Jewish bombing that killed 84 people.
The New York Times reported that the Iranian government carried out the attack in Buenos Aires and then paid Menem £7m (€11m) to hide its involvement.
Details of the alleged deal came from secret testimony by a high-level Iranian intelligence defector who gave his name as Abdolghassem Mesbahi, the newspaper said.
Menem received the money from a Swiss bank account controlled by Iran’s then president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, and by a son of late revolutionary leader Ayatollah Khomeini, Mesbahi alleged.
In return, Menem agreed to ‘‘make declarations that there was no evidence against Iran that it was responsible’’, he claimed.
But Menem’s brother Eduardo, a senator for the Peronist Party which ruled Argentina under Menem from 1989-99, dismissed the allegations as ‘‘rubbish’’.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday also criticised the report as a ‘‘journalistic fairy tale’’.
‘‘Such undocumented claims are constantly raised by Zionist circles after having failed to identify the real elements behind the bombing,’’ spokesman Hamid-Reza Assefi told the ISNA news agency.
Argentinean and Israeli security services have for years suspected Iran carried out the car-bomb attack on the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association.
Victims’ families have also criticised the Menem government for bungling the investigation which was repeatedly hampered by disappearing witnesses and unexplained delays.
The only suspects charged in connection with the attack are a car thief and policemen who provided the vehicle.
Two years before the bombing of the Jewish community centre, a similar attack killed 29 people at the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires.
Menem, 72, a Roman Catholic of Syrian Muslim descent, is running for a third term as president in next year’s elections.
He spent six months under house arrest in 2001 on charges of illegal arms trafficking while in office.
