Argentine leader asks UN to remember attacks on Jewish sites

(JTA) — Argentina’s president spoke against global terrorism and remembered the victims of the 1992 and 1994 attacks in Buenos Aires in his address to the United Nations General Assembly.

Mauricio Macri also called on Iran to cooperate in the investigation of the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing, which killed 85 and injured hundreds.

“We suffered two serious attacks in 1992 and 1994, which claimed the lives of 107 people and hundreds wounded,” Macri said Tuesday in his address to the international body. “Our country will not cease in its objective: to get all the people involved in the attacks to appear before Argentine courts, to be interrogated and eventually convicted.

“Next year will be 25 years after the AMIA bombing. I would like to again ask the Islamic Republic of Iran to cooperate with the Argentine judicial authorities to advance in the investigation of the most brutal terrorist attack in our territory.”

Macri also lamented that Russian officials declined Argentina’s request in July that they arrest a high-level adviser to Iran’s supreme leader in connection with the attack. Ali Akbar Velayati, who was Iran’s foreign minister at the time of the attack and visited Moscow earlier this year, has been implicated in ordering the bombing. There has been an international arrest warrant against Velayati and seven other Iranian officials since 2006.

“We ask the friendly countries of Argentina to accompany us, avoiding receiving under diplomatic immunity any of the accused for whom which have international arrest requests and red notes from Interpol,” Macri said.

He also offered condolences to the families of the five Argentine citizens who were killed on Oct. 31, 2017 by an Uzbeki driver in New York.

“My heart is with the families of the victims of terrorist barbarism around the world,” the president said.

Iran also is believed to be behind the 1992 car bombing that destroyed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 and injuring 242.