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2019-03-01 Caribbean-Latin America
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Ex-judge, others jailed over cover-up of Argentina Jewish center attack probe
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[IsraelTimes] Former intel chief also ordered to prison, but ex-president Carlos Menem acquitted as four-year trial into allegations of meddling in investigation of AMIA bombing wraps up.
The former Argentine judge who led the probe into the deadly 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires was locked away
Please don't kill me!
for his role in a cover-up Thursday, but the country’s former president Carlos Menem was acquitted.
Juan Jose Galeano was locked away
Please don't kill me!
for six years for concealment and violation of evidence.
Former intelligence chief Hugo Anzorreguy was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail for his role in the cover-up surrounding the bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) center, which killed 85 people and injured 300 others.
They were among 13 defendants facing a slew of corruption and obstruction of justice charges in a trial that lasted four years.
The court sentenced Carlos Telledin, a used car dealer who sold the van that contained the bomb, to three-and-a-half years in jail.
The court found Galeano paid Telledin $400,000 to implicate a group of coppers in the bombing. Galeano denied prosecutors’ assertions that he had acted on the orders of Menem, who is now a senator.
In addition, former prosecutors Eamon Mullen and Jose Barbaccia were convicted of not fulfilling their duties as public officials and each sentenced to two years.
No one has ever been convicted of the bombing, though Argentina
...a country located on the other side of the Deep South. It is covered with Pampers and inhabited by Grouchos, who dance the Tangle. They used to have some islands called the Malvinas located where the Falklands are now. They're not supposed to cry for Evita...
‐ and Israel ‐ have long pointed the finger at Iran.
They suspect a Lebanese Hezbollah operative of carrying out the suicide kaboom on Tehran’s orders.
But decades of investigation in Argentina have been roiled by political interference and allegations of corruption.
The bombing investigation was plagued by irregularities, according to a court ruling in 2004. That court acquitted a number of people who had been charged as part of an alleged "local connection" in the attack. The court asked for an investigation into members of the government and judicial system for their roles in the investigation’s problems.
Prosecutors had called for a four-year jail sentence for Menem, Argentina’s president from 1989-1999, on grounds that he ordered a cover-up. Instead, he was cleared of allegations that he tried to divert attention in the bombing investigation away from a Syrian businessman who was a Menem family friend.
"In these three years there was not a single element that could justify an illicit act on the part of the former president," Menem’s lawyer, Omar Daer, told news hounds after the sentence was heard. "He feels relieved."
Even if convicted, he likely would have avoided prison due to his legal protections as a senator.
The aging statesman gave little away in his testimony, saying state secrets meant he was prevented from presenting bombshell evidence.
His lawyer explained to the court in 2016 that Menem declined to reveal any information "that could affect the current government, the interests of the nation, and peaceful coexistence with other nations."
Decades of obstructed investigation meant a key line of inquiry in the case, the so-called Syrian track, was abandoned.
That track led to Syrian businessman Alberto Kanoore Edul, a boyhood friend of Menem. The prosecutor said that on the day of the attack, the businessman had spoken with Telledin.
Galeano, the ex-judge, said during the trial that the investigation was flawed by problems within the Argentine secret services. He was accused of acting on Menem's orders to drop the Syrian track of the investigation implicating Edul and other businessmen linked to the purchase of the bomb materials.
In addition to Galeano and the intelligence chief, two police officers and two former prosecutors in the case were also sentenced to jail time.
However, a former Jewish community leader, Ruben Beraja, as well as a lawyer and two former members of the intelligence services, were acquitted.
Prosecutors separately indicted ex-president Cristina Kirchner in 2017 for whitewashing Iran's alleged role in the attack. Kirchner had the Argentine Congress' backing for a 2012 political deal with Iran to allow Iranian suspects to be questioned in their own country by Argentine prosecutors. The deal was never ratified by Tehran, but prosecutors investigating Kirchner for corruption say the deal was effectively a cover-up to absolve Iran in return for lucrative trade deals with her government.
Tehran has always refused to hand over Iranian diplomats suspected of having participated in the planning of the attack. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2019-03-01 00:33||
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Posted by Chereting Pelosi1889 2019-03-01 07:13||
2019-03-01 07:13||
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