Argentina has asked Pakistan and Sri Lanka to arrest Iran’s interior minister over the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people, Argentina’s Foreign Ministry said Tuesday.
The Iranian minister, Ahmad Vahidi, is part of a delegation from Tehran led by Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi currently on a trip to the two countries.
Argentina’s statement Tuesday noted the international law enforcement agency Interpol’s arrest warrant for Vahidi. Interpol has had a red notice seeking his arrest at the request of Argentina since 2007 — a warrant that was renewed in 2022.
Argentina has previously stated that Vahidi, a former senior member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, is one of the key masterminds of the 1994 attack on the AMIA, and sought his extradition.
Vahidi also served as defense minister from 2009 to 2013, under then-Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
The 1994 assault has never been claimed or solved, but Argentina and Israel have long suspected the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah carried it out at Iran’s behest.
Prosecutors have charged top Iranian officials with ordering the attack, though Tehran has denied any involvement.
The court also implicated Hezbollah and called the attack against the AMIA — the deadliest in Argentina’s history — a “crime against humanity.”
Tuesday’s statement from the foreign ministry said: “Argentina seeks the international arrest of those responsible for the AMIA attack of 1994, which killed 85 people, and who remain in their positions with total impunity.”
“One of them is Ahmad Vahidi, sought by Argentine justice as one of those responsible for the attack against AMIA,” said the statement, which was co-signed by the security ministry.
Raisi, Vahidi and other Iranian officials embarked on a three-day trip to Pakistan starting Monday, seeking to patch up frayed ties between the two countries. The delegation arrived in Sri Lanka on Wednesday for a brief state visit aimed at strengthening ties and opening a $514-million hydropower project.
