Argentine Police Held in ’94 Blast

BUENOS AIRES — Raising anew the specter of anti-Semitism in Argentina’s security forces, authorities on Wednesday charged three police officials and a former detective as accomplices in the lethal bombing of a Jewish community center here in 1994.

A commander of the provincial police of Buenos Aires, two deputy commanders and a former detective were charged by Juan Jose Galeano, the judge who is overseeing the prosecution of the case, with providing the van that was used in the bombing--the deadliest anti-Semitic attack outside Israel since World War II.

After more than two years of investigation, these were the first suspects to be formally charged in the bombing case, which apparently has been obstructed by police corruption.

The explosion on July 18, 1994, destroyed the headquarters of the Argentine-Jewish Mutual Assn., a social agency in the heart of the Jewish community here, killing 87 people. Authorities believe that a suicide bomber also died in the blast, which Argentine and foreign law enforcement agencies blame on Iranian spies and the radical Islamic group Hezbollah.

But the indictment filed Wednesday advances a theory that, Jewish leaders and other critics say, explains the painful pace of the investigation: High-ranking police officials participated in the crime and a subsequent cover-up.

This is a disturbing development in a society with a history of anti-Semitic violence and gangsterism in its security forces.

“This is the first time they have advanced seriously on the trail of the so-called local connection,” said Sergio Widder, the representative in South America of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “Anyone who knows the history of anti-Semitism in Argentina should not be surprised that police were involved. It is absolutely credible.”

Although Argentina has one of the world’s largest Jewish populations, estimated at 250,000, many fugitive Nazis found refuge here after World War II.

Decades of intermittent military dictatorships with fascist and neo-Nazi leanings have also generated institutional anti-Semitism.

In the 1970s, the military, intelligence services and the police singled out Jews with special ferocity during a campaign of murder, torture and kidnapping known here as the “dirty war.” Consequently, relatives of bombing victims and Jewish leaders have expressed outrage and suspicion about the lack of results in the 1994 case and the 1992 car-bombing of the Israeli Embassy--an attack that killed 29 people and is also blamed on Middle Eastern terrorists and their Argentine accomplices.

Widder, however, was encouraged by the investigators’ decision to focus on the possible role of local police in the community center bombing.

“For Argentina, it is not paradoxical,” he said. “The fact that police have been charged makes people start to think that the authorities are doing things seriously.”

It is now up to provincial police, who patrol the vast metropolitan area around the capital, to conduct an aggressive internal investigation, Galeano told reporters Wednesday.

Despite Wednesday’s filing of charges, some Jewish leaders remained cautious about seeing real progress in the case. Galeano has rounded up suspects before on charges unrelated to the bombing in an apparent but unfulfilled hope of a breakthrough.

Most recently, for example, a band of accused right-wing extremists was charged with arms trafficking but all were released on bail.

But Wednesday’s indictment, in contrast, accuses the officers of acting as “necessary accomplices” in a multiple homicide.

The four are Juan Jose Ribelli, a commander; deputy commanders Irineo Leal and Raul Ibarra; and Mario Barreiro, a former inspector who was fired for corruption.

They have either proclaimed their innocence in interviews or refused to talk.

The suspects allegedly belonged to a ring of more than a dozen high- and mid-ranking investigators who were arrested en masse two weeks ago, federal prosecutor Jose Barbaccia said.

Prosecutors say the officials alternately protected and extorted money from a network of “chop shops,” businesses that cut up stolen vehicles for greater profit. These illegal enterprises were allegedly run by Carlos Alberto Telledin, a reputed petty gangster now jailed on auto theft charges.

He recently started talking to prosecutors, offering what they term vital evidence.

He testified that Leal and Ibarra took a Renault van from him as an extorted payment. A caravan of police escorted that vehicle away from his house in a secretive operation eight days before the bombing, Telledin testified.

Ribelli--who was the immediate superior of Leal and Ibarra--and Barreiro were also linked to the acquisition of the van, which was modified to carry a heavy load, authorities said.

Authorities are unsure where the van went for the five days after Telledin last saw it. But there are indications that it was left at a garage near the Jewish center, authorities say.

The evidence so far suggests that the jailed police agents turned the vehicle over to terrorists or their intermediaries, Barbaccia said in an interview, adding that authorities believe that police could also have participated directly in the bombing.

This fits with suspicions of Jewish leaders that renegade police mercenaries carried out the attack at the behest of Middle Eastern terrorists.

“Galeano has to show how far their responsibility goes,” Widder said. “We know where this starts, but we do not know where it ends. The local connection could go higher in the police force.”