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A Cover-up of Presidential Proportions
Matthew A. Gutman / Buenos Aires
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Three sad, elderly men, graybeards all, stand in front of the Supreme Court building clutching a banner � their battle standard � which reads, �We Are All Memoria Activa.�
But six and a half years after the AMIA Jewish community headquarters building here was bombed � killing 86 people in perhaps the worst single attack on Diaspora Jewry since the Holocaust � their placard is manifestly inaccurate. Outrage at the lack of progress in investigating the attack has given way, over the years, to near despair among the Jews, and apathy among the rest of the Argentinian public.
In the first months after the July 18, 1994 blast ripped apart the downtown building, hundreds of victims� relatives, activists and other angry Argentinians would gather for the weekly Memoria Activa (Active Memory) Monday morning demonstrations. Nowadays, the turnout rarely tops 50, mostly senior citizens. And the protest leaders� entreaties for justice, shouted through a bullhorn, attract barely a flicker of interest from passers-by. �After 336 weeks, the emotional fatigue is deep,� says Laura Ginzburg, one of the group leaders, whose husband died in the blast.
And yet, on the face of it, this should be the activists� moment of truth. For finally, in the next few weeks, 11 Argentinians allegedly involved in the bombing are to stand trial. The two leading defendants � former senior police commander Juan Jos� Rebelli, and small-time crook Alberto Telleldin � have been charged with multiple homicide and face life imprisonment. Rebelli, who protests his innocence, is effectively being portrayed as the man who arranged the bombing � the man who purchased and, possibly, placed explosives in the Renault Trafic van that rammed into the AMIA building. Telleldin, a known peddler of stolen vehicles, is alleged to have supplied the van � knowing that it was to be used to bomb a Jewish target. The nine other defendants are former police officers, subordinates of Rebelli�s, facing lesser charges.
So determined is the Buenos Aires municipality to have locals and the watching world see justice being done, that the case will not be heard at the cramped Supreme Court building. Instead, the city is refurbishing a former Federal Courthouse downtown, at a cost of $700,000, to accommodate the proceedings.
But there is no rejoicing among the Jews here, no sense of closure. Few believe that the 11 men who will stand in the dock were responsible for conceiving, initiating and orchestrating the bombing. In fact, no persuasive motive has been established for them; merely vague talk of anti-Semitism.
The bombing conspiracy, it seems self-evident, extends far beyond Argentina�s borders; even the state prosecutors effectively acknowledge this, by asserting, in their allegations against Rebelli, that he received a $2.5 million payment from an unknown source at the time of the blast. And yet, after all these years, this overseas conspiracy has not been properly investigated.
Indeed what is most galling � to the victims� families, the Jewish community, and some disgusted former investigators � is the conviction that the failure to expose this wider conspiracy has been deliberate � a cover-up that extends all the way to Carlos Menem, the charismatic president of Argentina between 1989 and 1999.
Says Mario Rojzman, rabbi of the city�s Beit El Synagogue, with considerable understatement: �Many of us are highly skeptical that this trial will lead to those truly responsible.� Adds Dr. Alberto Zuppi, lead lawyer for Memoria Activa: �Telleldin and Rebelli are the tip of the iceberg.�
In exclusive interviews with The Report, key sources have asserted that the bombing at the AMIA (Asociaci�n Mutual Israelita Argentina) building � just like the still unsolved bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires two years earlier, in which 29 people were killed � bears what they call �Syrian fingerprints.� They are convinced that both blasts were conceived in Damascus and orchestrated by Syrian nationals � and that they were designed to �persuade� Menem to alter the fundamental stance of his regime: to shift him away from his warming relations with the U.S. and Israel (in late 1991, Menem became the only Argentinian president ever to visit Israel), and bring Argentina into closer alliance with the Arab world.
Specifically, some sources also claim, the Syrians were furious that Menem � the child of Syrian-born immigrants � reneged on two pledges that he made during a September 1988 visit to Damascus, when he was still only a presidential candidate: that Argentina, under his leadership, would provide Syria with the technical expertise to build a nuclear reactor, and that it would sell Damascus a new, 1,000-kilometer range, ground-to-ground missile, the Condor II.
Finally, they claim that Menem has conspired, along with the federal judge overseeing the case, Juan Jos� Galeano, and Argentina�s police and intelligence services, to ensure that proof of this Syrian connection � which, according to some sources, involved members of the president�s own family � is never established.
IN TERMS OF PHYSICAL EVI-dence, there is no doubt that the investigators have acted appallingly � whether by accident or, as The Report�s sources assert, by design.
Lawyers for AMIA and Memoria Activa have established that almost all of the physical evidence relating to the bombing � wallets, other personal possessions of the victims, even body parts � was transferred directly from the bomb site by the investigating authorities to an open-air dump in the city�s northern Nu�ez neighborhood and left to rot for three years. Then, in 1997, the police collected the debris from the dump and tossed it into the R�o de la Plata. �No more than five percent [of the evidence] remains,� says Zuppi.
According to Zuppi, the investigation was �utterly sloppy� from the very start. �Body parts and debris, strewn all over the surrounding streets, were simply stuffed into plastic bags for removal,� he says.
And apparent sloppiness quickly gave way to seemingly more sinister developments. Miguel Bronfman, AMIA�s lawyer, notes, for example, that the only tape copies of 66 police wire taps, taken of Telleldin�s phone calls in the 20 days after the bombing, �disappeared� simultaneously soon afterwards from the archives of the police and the SIDE (State Intelligence Services). �These tapes would have incriminated Buenos Aires police officials in the bombing and the cover-up,� says Bronfman. �They were the only people with the motive to remove them.�
Dr. Claudio Lifschitz, author of the new book �AMIA: Why the Investigation Failed,� asserts that police and judicial corruption are central factors in the failure of the AMIA and the embassy investigations � but lays the overall blame at Menem�s door. A former police intelligence officer, Lifschitz, who says he has Jewish roots, was appointed 10 months after the AMIA blast to work as number two to Galeano, but quit two-and-a-half years later, disgusted by the judge�s handling of the case.
In an interview with The Report at a downtown Buenos Aires caf�, Lifschitz � who is doughy, jumpy and walks around with no small change but a fat billfold of $100 bills � begins by describing what he claims was a Menem family-inspired cover-up that arose from the embassy bombing case. Investigators, he says, came across a terror cell that they believed was involved. But this information was never acted upon. And, even after the AMIA blast, despite its possible relevance, it was not made available to Galeano. Lifschitz claims that details of the cell were kept secret because its members were linked to a man of Syrian descent named Jacinto Kanoore Edul, who was close to Menem. Eventually, the information did reach Galeano � and might have produced a lead in the AMIA probe. But, claims Lifschitz, the judge was ordered by phone not to pursue the Kanoore Edul angle. Who made the call? Says Lifschitz: �Menem�s brother, Munir.�
From this point on, claims Lifschitz, Galeano secretly worked with the SIDE, and directly with Carlos Menem himself, to cover up Syrian links to the AMIA bombing. Lifschitz maintains that Menem consulted Galeano regularly, urging him to steer the investigation away from leads pointing to Kanoore Edul and, incredibly, to the president�s own in-laws � members of the Syrian Yoma and Nachrash families.
Prior to the AMIA case, Galeano had the reputation of a young, ambitious and forthright judge, who would help reform the corrupt system. He had been appointed a federal judge, in 1992, by Menem�s ultra-loyal (and Jewish) Interior Minister Carlos Corach. Though aged just 34, Galeano, slim and bearded, was seen as a good, if unproven, choice when named to head the AMIA probe.
Lifschitz believes that Galeano succumbed to presidential pressure to join the cover-up for the sake of his career. Menem is already gearing up for a political comeback � planning to run for a third term as president in elections in 2003 (Argentinian law prevented him from running for a third consecutive term in 1999) � and, Lifschitz believes, Galeano ducked the direct confrontation with Menem that an honest investigation would have entailed.
Lifschitz is convinced that Menem knows precisely who was behind both bombings, and that members of his own wider family did play a role. �How else,� asks Lifschitz, �would Menem and Galeano have known exactly whom to protect, whom to investigate and who was expendable?� Needless to say, it was critical to Menem that the Syrian connection, and especially the family connection, be covered up, says Lifschitz � critical to his presidency at the time, and critical to his comeback aspirations now.
According to Larry Levy, an Argentinian Israeli and editor of the weekly �La Voc de Israel,� Menem also feared Israel would sever ties with his country if the truth came out. And he must have feared the Syrians too: If Argentinian investigators had pursued the Syrians, says Levy, Damascus, which had twice proved capable of staging bombings in his country, might have leaked highly incriminating information against him, or even assassinated him.
(In the immediate aftermath of the AMIA bombing, Menem gave an interview to The Report at his Casa Rosada presidential offices in which he insisted that �all the state�s resources have been placed at the disposal of the investigators.� He also noted, however, that, �I too am under threat. I am considered a traitor to the Arab cause. My situation is of great concern.�
Central to the cover-up, claims Lifschitz, was the bribing by Judge Galeano of Alberto Telleldin. Lifschitz notes that initially Telleldin insisted he didn�t know the identities of the people to whom he had sold the van used in the AMIA blast. But Galeano, Lifschitz claims, paid Telleldin to change his testimony. �Menem ordered Galeano to implicate the police,� Lifschitz claims, �because this would divert attention� from the Syrian track. Rebelli, other sources have suggested to The Report, was selected as the �fall guy� because he was an �easy target,� with a reputation as a �dirty, corrupt cop.� The judge�s own surveillance videotapes, says Lifschitz, show him negotiating with Telleldin and writing the figure �$400,000� on a sheet of paper.
Galeano flatly denies all claims of a cover-up, and says that he has done his best to get to the bottom of the bombing. He contends that the videotape shows him discussing with Telleldin whether it would be legally acceptable for the defendant to accept a $400,000 advance from an Argentinian publisher for a book on the affair.
Lifschitz alleges that there were narrower political motives as well. The alleged bribery took place in 1998, when Menem was nearing the end of his second term as president, and was anxious to ensure that his former vice president and fellow Peronist, Eduardo Dualde, would not succeed him. Even then, Menem was contemplating making a bid for a third term as president in 2003, and he wanted to be sure Dualde would be sidelined.
As governor of Buenos Aires province, Dualde was in charge of the police and the resulting scandal permanently tarnished his image. When Telleldin�s testimony became public in mid-1998, Dualde�s early lead in the polls over Radical Party leader Fernando de la Rua evaporated, and he lost the 1999 election by a landslide.
The Jewish Link in the Cover-up?
According to Lifschitz, the corruption extends into the heart of the most unlikely sector of all: the Jewish community. No less a figure than Rub�n Beraja, the former president of the Jewish umbrella organization DAIA, he claims, was bought off by Menem, paid not to publicly criticize the government over the investigation.
And this damning allegation is supported by Horacio Lutsky, a Buenos Aires lawyer and a former producer for Beraja�s now defunct Jewish TV station, Aleph.
Peering around the press room in AMIA�s new, high-security, steel-andconcrete premises, rebuilt on the site of the destroyed building, Lutsky asserts to The Report that, during March and April of 1998, Menem funneled $322 million in dirty government money � cash from illegal arms and drugs deals with countries including Croatia and Ecuador � through Beraja�s Banco Mayo, one of Argentina�s largest network of privately owned banks. Part of that money, Lutsky says, helped Beraja�s too rapidly expanding banking network stay afloat. In return, Beraja kept the Jewish leadership from criticizing the government over the case.
Journalist Larry Levy echoes the allegation, and asserts that the Menem-Beraja connection was brokered by Corach, the Interior Minister from 1994 to 1999.
The Menem-Beraja cooperation, Lutsky claims, flourished until Beraja lost all credibility in the Jewish community. Rumors linking Beraja to the cover-up begun to swirl around Buenos Aires in early 1998 and, on Friday, July 17 that year, at a memorial service marking the fourth anniversary of the bombing, the thousands of Jews who had gathered to demonstrate support for the victims of the attack and their families booed Beraja as he tried to address them. By the end of the following week, most Banco Mayo branches were closing down, causing chaos in the community. �Beraja had served his purpose,� says Lutzky. �And now that he had lost the faith of the Jews, he had lost his usefulness.� Buenos Aires daily newspapers quoted Beraja complaining to Menem: �You planted the third bomb � letting me fail.�
The bank collapse bankrupted a Jewish hospital, old age home, school and radio station, and forced the local Bar-Ilan University, which Beraja had supported, to close immediately, leaving students out of pocket and with half-finished degrees that other universities refused to accept.
Today, at least partly in consequence of the collapse of Beraja�s banking empire, the Argentinian Jewish community is in deep recession, with a quarter of its members living below the poverty line (See �As Insidious as Terrorism,� The Report, January 29, 2001).
Prior to the scandal, says AMIA�s spokesperson Roxana Levinson, �Beraja had the reputation of the savior of the community� � the honorable philanthropist. Now, he is on trial for fraud, relating to the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars in central bank loans.
The courtly, soft-spoken Beraja, 64, denies those charges, and vehemently denies playing any role in a cover-up of the AMIA blast.
The Syrian Connection
Larry Levy has spent five years trying to trace the �Syrian fingerprints� in the AMIA blast. And he is convinced that a well-connected, shadowy Syrian figure named Munzer al-Kassar masterminded both bombings. Al-Kassar is a onetime business partner of exiled former Syrian vice president Rifat Asad, uncle of current President Bashar al-Asad; he is also brother-in-law of Syrian Military Intelligence Chief Ali Dubah. �Al-Kassar landed in Argentina shortly before each bombing and left shortly thereafter,� Levy asserts.
Involved in drug- and arms-trafficking and terror since the 1970s, al-Kassar escorted then-presidential candidate Menem on his 1988 trip to Syria. This was Menem�s first visit to the land of his parents� birth; tellingly, he has never returned.
According to a report into the two bombings, written by Argentina�s former economy minister Domingo Cavallo and published by his Acci�n Por La Rep�blica political party, al-Kassar was present at a Damascus meeting with Syrian vice president Abdul Halim Haddam at which Menem signed a document promising Argentinian technical expertise for a Syrian nuclear reactor. At the same meeting, says the Cavallo report, citing the testimony of ex-Argentinian ambassador to Syria Oscar Spinosa Melo, al-Kassar also brokered the planned sale to Syria by Argentina of Condor II missiles � ground-to-ground, 1,000-kilometer range missiles that were then in an advanced stage of development.
In the course of the trip, the report continues, the Syrians offered (and later gave) Menem $100 million. Ostensibly, this was to help finance his election campaign. Levy believes it was earmarked for the Condor.
But Menem, who easily won the 1989 elections, reneged on the nuclear reactor promise and, to strengthen ties with the U.S., aborted the Condor II in mid-1991. Levy posits that the Syrians, hungry for revenge, dispatched al-Kassar to Argentina for the double duty of destroying Menem�s reputation and disrupting the nascent peace process with a terror attack.
Days before the embassy bombing on March 17, 1992, Al-Kassar entered Argentina on an Air Iberia flight at Ezezia International airport. He left, for Spain, three weeks later.
The embassy, in downtown Buenos Aires, was blown up in the early afternoon, when a Ford F-100 truck parked beside the complex exploded. In an interview with the Report, Supreme Court investigator Dr. Diego Richards said it had been established that the Ford was purchased in the lawless Paraguayan city of Ciudad del Este, for $21,000 in $100 bills. �We traced those bills,� Richards continued, �to a currency-exchange bank in Northern Lebanon.� This bank, it turned out, was a subsidiary of the �Society of Change in Beirut,� which was owned by Munzer al-Kassar.
Supreme Court explosives expert Oscar Laborda has established that the Ford was packed with Semtex explosives. The Cavallo report, citing Swiss and Spanish intelligence sources, notes that the Semtex may have been smuggled into Argentina from Syria, also via Ezezia, by al-Kassar in mid-1991. (The presidential representative of customs at Ezezia, until July of 1991, was one Ibrahim al-Ibrahim � a colonel in the Syrian military intelligence who also happens to be the brother-in-law of Menem�s then-wife Zulema Yoma. Al-Ibrahim quit his job and fled to Syria in July 1991, to avoid fraud charges for abuse of public office.)
State documents show that al-Kassar entered the country again in July 1994, a few days before the destruction of the AMIA building.
�The key to this whole puzzle,� says Levy, �is that the two bombings occurred after Argentina blocked the installation of the nuclear reactor in Syria, and scrapped the Condor II. It doesn�t take a Perry Mason to understand the motive.�
(Nicknamed �The Godfather of Terror,� Al-Kassar has also been linked by some journalists and researchers to the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988. According to a number of press reports down the years, al-Kassar was running a drugs smuggling operation out of Lebanon at the time, was exposed by the CIA, but was allowed to continue because it was hoped he might be able to help secure the release of American hostages held in Lebanon.
On December 21,1988, according to a report by Interfor Inc., a New York anti-terrorism consulting group hired by Pan Am�s insurer to investigate that bombing, al-Kassar allowed terrorists working for Ahmed Jibril�s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command to substitute a suitcase filled with explosives for his usual cocaine-filled suitcase on a flight route from Frankfurt to New York.
All 259 passengers and crew, plus 11 people on the ground, died when Flight 103 blew up. Among those on board, according to the Interfor report, were five CIA agents returning from an attempted rescue mission of American hostages in Beirut. (See The Report�s Lockerbie investigation, �Getting Away with Murder,� September 25, 2000.)
What Does Israel Know?
There�s a final element of the alleged cover-up that infuriates lawyer Lutzky, Rabbi Rojzman, journalist Levy and others: a sense that Israel has failed to play its part in bringing the bombers to justice. �Surely Israel,� says Rojzman, �with all its expertise in bombing cases, could have devoted more resources to this. Its own embassy was blown up. Why did it leave the task to inept, corrupt Argentinian officials?�
Lutzky and Levy go much further, asserting that Israel is well aware of the Syrian role in both blasts, but that successive governments have declined to expose it � because they still aspire to build a peace partnership with Damascus, and fear the Israeli public would reject this if it became clear that Syria had ordered the bombings.
�The Mossad always gets its men,� says Levy, �from Tunis, to Beirut, to Argentina in the 1960s� � a reference to the capture of Adolf Eichmann. �But this time, there is nothing. Just silence.�
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