Wiesenthal Centre Slams Iran for Appointing AMIA Bomber its New Interior Minister

August 11, 2021

Buenos Aires and Paris - In a letter to the Argentine Foreign Minister the Centre stated: "Argentina cannot remain silent in the face of a new provocation by Iran, appointing a fugitive from justice as Minister of the Interior.”
 
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre's Directors for International Relations and for Latin America, Drs. Shimon Samuels and Ariel Gelblung, respectively, expressed outrage to Foreign Minister Felipe Sola, at the appointment of Ahmad Vahidi (pictured) as Minister of the Interior of Iran.
 
Gelblung stressed, “Argentina cannot remain silent in the face of a new provocation by Iran, appointing a fugitive from justice as Minister of the Interior. It is an insult to Argentina and a blow to the families of the 85 dead and over 300 wounded in the attack on the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) and a reward for terrorism granting Vahidi a form of sanctuary.”
 
Samuels noted, "Vahidi, was Head of the Quds Force, the paramilitary arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard at the time of the 1994 attack and is on the red alert list of INTERPOL... on 18 July 2018, in commemoration of the bombing, we [Simon Wiesenthal Center] organized a round table at the British Parliament together with the Argentine Ambassador to the United Kingdom. We brought an Argentine lawyer, an AMIA survivor and a British expert on extradition...the result was to invigorate the INTERPOL Red Notices for the arrest and detention of the surviving terrorists... Our Centre will monitor the foreign travel of Vahidi on the grounds that even a Minister of the Interior of a terrorist State must face justice.”

For further information, please contact Dr. Shimon Samuels at +336 09770158 or Dr. Ariel Gelblung at +54 9 11 49695365, join the Center on Facebook, or follow @simonwiesenthal for news updates sent directly to your Twitter feed.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).