Israel denied a claim by one of its former ambassadors to Argentina that Israel has killed most of the people responsible for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community building in Buenos Aires.
“The vast majority of the guilty parties are in another world, and this is something we did,” Yitzhak Aviran said in an interview published Thursday by the Jewish News Agency, or AJN, a Spanish-language service. He did not specify their identities or how they were killed.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Saturday denied the claim.
“The statements by former ambassador Aviran, who has been in retirement for some 15 years, are completely disconnected from reality. These remarks, made on no authority nor knowledge, are pure fantasy and do not reflect in any way events or facts such as he pretends to depict,” the ministry said in a statement.
Eighty-five people died in the 1994 suicide bombing at the multistory Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina building, and hundreds more were wounded.
Aviran, who served as ambassador until 2000, arrived in Buenos Aires in 1993, the year before the attack and a year after a car bomb in front of the Israeli embassy in the city killed 29 people and wounded 200 others.
“Israel continues to cooperate in full transparency with Argentina in investigating the bombings which took place in Buenos Aires against the Embassy of Israel (1992) and the AMIA Jewish Community Center (1994),” the ministry’s statement added.
Buenos Aires Prosecutor Alberto Nisman told the Associated Press that he will ask the Israeli and Argentinean governments to order an Israeli judge to make Aviran explain who was killed and what proof he has of the assassinations.