Posted on 03/09/2003 6:55:22 AM PST by knighthawk
TEHRAN, March 9 (AFP) - Iran said Sunday it will take "necessary measures" if Argentina does not correct its "mistake" over arrest warrants issued against some 20 Iranian officials in connection with a deadly 1994 bombing.
"If the information concerning the arrest warrents is true, the Argentine government should make up for this mistake, otherwise the Islamic Republic will take necessary measures in this regard," state media quoted foreign ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi as saying.
An Argentine judge issued international arrest warrants Friday for four Iranian officials suspected of involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish charities building in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.
They included former intelligence and security minister Ali Fallahian; former cultural attache at the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires Mohsen Rabbani and diplomatic courier Barat Ali Balesh Abadi.
The judge also upheld and reaffirmed an existing international arrest warrant, dating from August 9, 1994, for Ali Akbar Parvaresh, an Iranian former official who was fingered by an Iranian dissident.
The Iranian foreign Ministry already protested a report on the plan to issue the warrants carried by the Argentine daily La Nacion last month and demanded an "appropriate explanation" from Buenos Aires.
The daily had listed Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as among the suspects wanted by Argentina in connection with the bombing.
Asefi Sunday accused Iran's arch foe Israel of being behind the "baseless allegations".
"There has been no convincing proof of Iran's involvement in that incident, and we have repeatedly said that these rumours and reports are made up by Zionist circles," he said.
Don't know about judicial procedure in Argentina, but in the US a warrant is not issued absent "probable cause", meaning sufficient credible evidnce was presented to the court concluding that these guys "probably" did it.
A democratic Iran will emerge within 2 years with America's help.
But the judge balked at a recommendation by prosecutors that more than a dozen more senior Iranian officials, including Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's spiritual leader, also be indicted.
He offered no public comment, and the decision is likely to intensify criticism from a variety of quarters that he has not pursued the case aggressively enough.
The 400-page ruling, by Judge Juan José Galeano, made public on Saturday, was the first time that Argentina has formally accused Iran of involvement in the blast that occurred on July 18, 1994, and was the deadliest single anti-Semitic incident since World War II.
The judge also cited evidence from the state intelligence agency that ''armed units of the pro-Iranian armed group Hezbollah'' were also involved, though no Hezbollah member was named in the indictment.
The highest-ranking Iranian official named is Ali Fallahijan, a former minister of security and intelligence. Mohsen Rabbani, the cultural attaché in the Iranian Embassy in Buenos Aires in the mid-1990s, was named in the indictment as operational director of the attack.
The other two officials indicted were Ali Balesh Abadi, a diplomatic courier; and Ali Akbar Parvaresh, a former education minister and former deputy speaker of the Iranian Parliament who is the leader of an influential conservative religious group.
None of the men is currently in Argentina, and the indictment was accompanied by a request that Interpol apprehend the four officials. But the likelihood that they will be arrested, unless they travel outside Iran under their own names, is remote.
Fallahijan, a clergyman who is a member of Iran's Assembly of Experts, is already wanted in Germany in connection with the 1992 killing of four Kurdish dissidents in Berlin.
The indictment drew an angry reaction from Iran, where the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamid Reza Asefi, said Sunday that ''no evidence of Iranian involvement has been provided,'' and dismissed the charges as a fabrication ''made up by Zionist circles'' in Israel and the United States. [End]
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