Palestinian-Americans sidelined during DNC platform debate

According to a document shared with Mondoweiss, DNC delegates expressed their outrage at the exclusion of Palestinian-American voices from the platform drafting process while pro-Israel lobbyists openly bragged about their efforts to strip out language critical of Israel.

BY JOSH RUEBNER  JULY 30, 2020

https://mondoweiss.net/2020/07/palestinian-americans-sidelined-during-dnc-platform-debate/

The concerns of Palestinian-American delegates to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) went unheeded earlier this week as the 187-member platform committee, comprised of Biden, Sanders, and party leader delegates, stuck with draft platform language reinforcing the hidebound, failed policies of the Obama administration on Israeli-Palestinian issues. 

It expresses “ironclad” commitment to unconditional funding for Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinian people. It also conveys tepid support for Palestinian statehood and opposition to Israeli annexation but fails to press Israel in any meaningful way to end its military occupation and stop its land grab.

According to a document shared with Mondoweiss, Palestinian-American delegates to the DNC authored an amendment that included conditioning military funding to Israel, ending the Israeli occupation, opposing Israeli settlements, asserting Palestinian rights to Jerusalem, excising a discriminatory reference to Israel as a Jewish state, and calling for equal rights between Palestinians and Israeli Jews.

In a powerful letter to the platform committee that accompanied the amendment language, eight Palestinian-American DNC delegates from Virginia, Michigan, Texas, California, and New Mexico expressed their outrage at the DNC for excluding Palestinian-American voices from the drafting process while pro-Israel lobbyists openly bragged about their efforts to strip out language critical of Israel. 

“Expressing unwavering support for a country that continues to thumb its nose at international law while it steals Palestinian land entrenches apartheid and denies our families’ basic human rights are unacceptable. It is unacceptable to us; it is unacceptable to a growing majority of the Democratic Party, and it should be unacceptable to every American who aims for true freedom, justice, human rights, and democracy,” they wrote. 

Their amendment language was duly submitted to the DNC by a Sanders delegate to the platform committee but was not brought up for a vote. It is unclear what happened to this amendment language, as determinations about amendments happen behind closed doors, but its omission from the process further reinforced the marginalization of Palestinian-American voices. 

The opaque nature of the platform, the process was made even murkier this year because of coronavirus restrictions. The virtual, tightly controlled public sessions stood in contrast to the more free-wheeling and raucous deliberations of the committee four years ago. 

A skewed debate

The DNC’s disregard for Palestinian-American concerns was particularly galling to Zeina Ashrawi Hutchison, a Sanders DNC delegate from Virginia, who told Mondoweiss that “It’s not surprising that the Israel lobby was in full control of the platform on Palestine-Israel. But what is shocking is how out of touch the party and its leadership are with the people that it claims to represent. If the goal was party unity, they’ve failed and managed to alienate the majority. Human rights are non-negotiable and the Palestinian people’s right to freedom and self-determination will overcome Israeli apartheid and oppression.”

Samia Assed, a Sanders DNC delegate from New Mexico, asked, “How can I ask my community to support the Democratic Party while they don’t support our cause? How can I discuss my engagement with the party with my nine children?”

Rather than uplift the concerns of Palestinian-American delegates to the DNC, the platform committee chose instead to debate and defeat a weaker amendment prompted by non-Palestinians. 

Clem Balanoff, a Sanders delegate to the platform committee offered amendment language to condition military funding to Israel on human rights standards, to call for an end to military occupation, and to oppose Israeli settlements rather than only their expansion. 

The Balanoff amendment appeared to be inspired by a joint op-ed written by Jeremy Ben-Ami and Jim Zogby, presidents of J Street, and the Arab American Institutes, respectively.

The impact of Balanoff’s strong speech to the platform committee was diluted, however, by his repeated invocations of former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s statement (later retracted) opposing Israeli military occupation. The Sharon references encapsulated everything that was problematic in the DNC platform process: Palestinian rights cannot be acknowledged, much less supported, without the approbation of their oppressors.

To bolster this dynamic, the co-chairs of the platform committee allowed two former Obama administration officials–Ambassadors Dan Shapiro and Wendy Sherman–both of whom were intimately involved with its Middle East policy-making and who have deep connections to Israel and the Jewish-American community, to slap down the amendment. 

Their tag-team effort was an outlier to an otherwise strictly balanced amendment process in which only one speaker was permitted to each side before voting took place.

Signs of progress

Since Biden delegates were allocated the vast majority of seats on the committee, reflecting the overall distribution of DNC delegates between Biden and Sanders, the outcome of the amendment was never in doubt. The 34-117 vote count, with five abstentions, more or less mirrored the Biden-Sanders split on the committee with some notable exceptions. 

For example, Biden delegates Farhana Khera, Executive Director of Muslim Advocates, and Khurrum Wahid, chair of Engage Action, voted for the amendment, suggesting a path forward for Muslim-American engagement with the Biden campaign to improve its position on Palestine.

Palestinian-Americans and their allies might be able to take some cold comfort from the fact that the platform includes for the first time a provision to uphold free speech rights to engage in boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaigns for Palestinian rights.

It is not an insignificant departure, as the previous DNC platform opposed BDS, while the 2016 and recycled 2020 Republican platform not only deemed BDS “anti-Semitic” but called for “effective legislation to thwart” the movement. During the past four years, this disregard for constitutional norms has empowered a bipartisan group of elected officials at the state and federal levels to propose and enact legislation to penalize and even criminalize BDS proponents.

At least under a Biden administration, BDS advocates would not have to fear federal prison time for coordinating with the UN to boycott Israeli settlement goods, as was proposed in Israel Anti-Boycott Act by Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) in 2017.

However, this is the only redeeming feature of a platform that is otherwise hostile to Palestinian rights and inconsonant with the sentiments of the base of the party.

With much of the DNC being virtual this year, it is unclear if Palestinian-American DNC delegates will have the opportunity to mobilize their fellow delegates to display solidarity with Palestine as was evident on the floor of the 2016 DNC delegation.

The 2020 DNC platform, like Biden himself, is a throwback to an outmoded display of Democratic fealty toward Israeli apartheid. Despite the abominable platform language, through strategic organizing, those who support Palestinian rights can ensure that the next Democratic platform more accurately reflects the base of the party’s support for Palestinian freedom, justice, and equality.

The writer is an active member of the Fairfax County (Virginia) Democratic Committee.    

El ajedrez de Lozoya

30/07/2020

https://www.elfinanciero.com.mx/opinion/raymundo-riva-palacio/el-ajedrez-de-lozoya

Raymundo Riva Palacio

Emilio Lozoya ha dado muestras muy importantes de inteligencia estratégica. En dos días de juicio ha puesto a volar el imaginario de una nación que quiere sangre de corruptos, le ha inyectado helio a los sueños del Presidente para que pueda cumplir el mandato de 30 millones de votos y derruir el sistema político que enfrentó sin éxito casi dos décadas, y subordinado a la Fiscalía General a sus tiempos, formas y deseos. Con apenas probaditas, no ha aportado absolutamente ninguna de las pruebas que ofreció para no pisar la cárcel, está alistándose para irse a vivir a la casa de sus padres y vivir en libertad provisional mientras lo cuida la Guardia Nacional, al tiempo de ir construyendo la idea de que es inocente y vengarse de quienes siente y cree que lo abandonaron y traicionaron.

Por segundo día consecutivo se declaró inocente de las imputaciones que le hace la Fiscalía por operaciones con recursos de procedencia ilícita en el caso de Odebrecht, como el martes hizo lo mismo en el tema de Agronitrogenados. Además, repitió la misma frase preparada por la defensa: “En relación con los hechos que se me imputan, fui intimidado, presionado, influenciado e instrumentalizado”. Sus abogados añadieron que Lozoya “fue utilizado en su calidad de instrumento no doloso en el marco de un aparato organizado de poder”.

La estrategia de Lozoya es tramposa, lo que no habla mal de él necesariamente, sino de la Fiscalía General, donde si el fiscal Alejandro Gertz Manero no empieza a exigirle pruebas, terminará pidiéndole perdón, para llevar al extremo grotesco lo que está sucediendo. Lozoya está utilizando la retórica para confundir. No puede declararse inocente si al mismo tiempo afirma estar negociando con la Fiscalía para convertirse en testigo colaborador. Para apelar al criterio de oportunidad, que es lo que busca le otorguen para disminuir sus penas o que le condonen sus actos criminales, como establece ese recurso, primero tiene que ser culpable de un delito. Si fuera inocente, no tendría necesidad de recurrir a esa figura.

Lo que dicen sus abogados también es engañoso. Cuando afirman que fue “un instrumento no doloso”, se refiere al artículo 13, fracción IV del Código Penal, sobre las personas responsables de delitos. Los abogados la conocen como la “autoría mediata”, que significa que la persona incurrió en un delito sin saber que estaba cometiéndolo, por lo que es inocente. Los expertos sostienen que esa fracción no se aplica en el caso de Lozoya. La propia búsqueda del criterio de oportunidad y los testimonios de los exejecutivos de Odebrecht sobre los sobornos, por unos 10.5 millones de dólares al exdirector de Pemex, lo contradicen.

Los fiscales aún no lo confrontan porque se encuentran en la presentación de las imputaciones. Lozoya igualmente ha respondido, y colocado las piezas sobre el ajedrez que está jugando. El martes y miércoles dijo que daría los nombres de las personas que lo presionaron, dejando ver su estrategia: está preparando una acusación directa contra el expresidente Enrique Peña Nieto, y el exsecretario de Hacienda y de Relaciones Exteriores, Luis Videgaray. Ellos dos son los primeros objetivos claros cuyas siluetas dejó ver en los dos primeros días de audiencias.

Sus cabezas son las que había ofrecido desde un principio a Gertz Manero, en su “Declaración Nitrogenados”, descrita en este espacio, donde los acusó de haber sido los arquitectos de un mecanismo de corrupción desde el poder mismo, como lo han parafraseado sus abogados. Eso ya lo sabía Gertz Manero, quien después de 48 horas de juicio, aún no tiene nada en las manos de todo lo que ofreció. Por ejemplo, no ha entregado ninguno de los videos que se comprometió, manteniendo en la oscuridad a los fiscales sobre la valía y contundencia de ellos.

Lozoya está manejando el juicio en sus tiempos. Ayer mismo le solicitó al juez de control definir el miércoles su situación jurídica con respecto al caso Odebrecht. Las jugadas las está definiendo el exdirector de Pemex, junto con los tiempos del juicio. La Fiscalía General, al solicitar el martes la ampliación a seis meses para que puedan acumular pruebas, le regaló a Lozoya un primer periodo para que pueda ir administrando la documentación para construir el caso de corrupción contra los gobiernos de Peña Nieto y, eventualmente, Felipe Calderón.

Los tiempos le funcionarán políticamente bien a López Obrador, pero hasta un cierto límite. El Presidente no podrá mantener el discurso de lo mucho que aportará Lozoya para mostrar la corrupción del pasado si, en efecto, no produce las pruebas esperadas. Probablemente en Palacio Nacional no hay angustia todavía por la falta de pruebas, pero en la Fiscalía General deben estar preocupados. El juicio ya comenzó y no les ha dado nada todavía. Lo único que han recibido son frases y promesas ante el juez, pero dentro de su propia estrategia de defensa.

La Fiscalía General ha cumplido con lo que le pidió Lozoya a través de su padre: no pisaría la cárcel cuando llegara a México, ir del aeropuerto de la Ciudad de México a un hospital, y de ahí a su casa. Tampoco dio algo políticamente útil para la narrativa del Presidente, como la fotografía al llegar a México. La imagen al entrar a la cárcel no existe porque ni siquiera estuvo cerca del reclusorio. Entonces, nada para el caso jurídico, nada para la semiótica. El trato a Lozoya es notoriamente excepcional a cambio de migajas y promesas de un poco de pan. Es una burla.

Gertz Manero tendría que estar revisando si a todo lo que hizo para que Lozoya regresara a México, le ha faltado una segunda parte de estrategia, antes de que junto con López Obrador empiece a perder todas sus piezas en el astuto ajedrez que está jugando Lozoya.

Even if there is a new cold war, Washington can hardly win it

By Ai Jun Source: Global Times Published: 2020/7/28 

These days, quite a few people wake up every morning to find themselves getting closer to a new cold war between Beijing and Washington, thanks to unceasing insane provocations by US anti-China hawks. Although disputes remain on whether this new cold war is on, a voice has already emerged in the US - if the US could collapse the Soviet Union, why can't it collapse China?

The voice may be a perfect reflection of the mindset of US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who has been marching forward on the path to portray China as a cold war enemy. But Pompeo does not represent the US. He has tried hard to peddle the so-called China threat theory, but there are still sane Americans who have seen through his outright falsehoods, with some claiming he "dishonors the State Department," and "anything he says on the subject of veracity is by definition meaningless." 

The US does not represent the world, either. The US has been trying to rope in as many countries as possible to take Washington's side in the face of the so-called threat from Beijing. Yet those countries have clear answers on whether China poses a threat to them. 

Many of the current generations of senior US politicians, including Pompeo, grew up during the Cold War, which left an indelible imprint on them. But those people failed to keep pace with the times, and are trying to pull the US and the world backward. 

This is not an era of a cold war, but an era of globalization, in which the world can hardly go back to the mode with clear-cut barriers and confrontations. Apart from the US, no country wants a new cold war and even US allies do not wish to treat China as an enemy, turning themselves into a stepping stone for US politicians' personal gains. 

For the moment, talks on a China-EU investment agreement are underway. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the EU has a "great strategic interest" in maintaining cooperation with China. London seems to have sided with Washington, but the UK government is reportedly eager to see the US President Donald Trump loses the election in November because "it would make things much easier [for the UK]." Japan, which is looking forward to holding the Olympic Games, recently heard suggestions from Japanese experts to "bar countries with high transmission rates from sending delegations - such as the US."

Washington can hardly establish a broad alliance anymore. An alliance needs a leading role which cares for the interests of others. Today's US is far from that kind of leader due to a series of selfish approaches to make America great again. If Washington is determined on launching a new cold war, it will end up finding itself alone. 

China never wants a cold war. Unlike the US-Soviet Union rivalry, China doesn't focus on competing ideologies or political systems.

Yet some Americans are stuck in their fantasy that a new cold war is coming and the US could win just like in the previous one. They should chill first before rushing to claim victory, since the result of the Cold War was mainly caused by domestic issues in the former Soviet Union. However, some elites are living in the past, and believe they are good at fighting a cold war. 

Some US hawks won't let go of their cold war playbook and are trying to direct a new play based on it. In the end, they will realize it is nothing more than an illusion.  

How a Police Spy’s Stunning Testimony Threatens the Official US-Israeli AMIA Bombing Narrative

Revelations by a former police spy upend the official story blaming Iran for the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, and suggest a cover-up by dirty war elements may have let the real culprits off the hook.

by Gareth Porter Posted on July 28, 2020

https://original.antiwar.com/porter/2020/07/27/how-a-police-spys-stunning-testimony-threatens-the-official-us-israeli-amia-bombing-narrative/

Reprinted from The Grayzone with the author’s permission.

The July 18, 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina was one of the worst pre-9/11 terrorist attacks in the Western hemisphere, killing 85 and injuring 300.

For over a quarter-century, the US and Israeli governments have blamed Iran for the bloodshed, citing it as primary evidence of Tehran’s role as the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism.

This narrative remains part of the propaganda offensive against Iran, and has been exploited by the Donald Trump administration to justify a campaign of economic strangulation aimed at either destabilizing the Islamic Republic or achieving regime change.

Soon after the bombing, the United States and Israel placed heavy pressure on the Argentine government to implicate Iran. At the time, however, officials in the embassy in Buenos Aires were well aware there was no hard evidence to support such a conclusion.

In an August 1994 cable to the State Department, US Ambassador James Cheek boasted of the “steady campaign” the embassy had waged that “kept the Iranians in the dock where they belong.” In a striking comment to this writer in 2007, Cheek conceded, “To my knowledge, there was never any real evidence” of Iranian responsibility.

Bill Brencick, the chief of the political section in the US embassy from 1994 to 1997, also acknowledged in a 2007 interview that US insinuations of Iranian responsibility were based solely on a “wall of assumptions” that had “no hard evidence to connect those assumptions to the case.”

Brencick recalled that he and other US officials recognized “enough of a Jewish community [in Buenos Aires] and a history of anti-Semitism that local anti-Semites had to be considered as suspects.” But this line of investigation was never pursued in any official capacity, likely because it contradicted the interests of a US national security state that was dead-set on indicting Iran for the bombing.

However, dramatic development has threatened to upend the official US-Israeli narrative on the AMIA attack. In 2014, the public learned that a former spy who had infiltrated the Jewish community in Buenos Aires on behalf of Argentina’s Federal Police had revealed to two investigative journalists that he had been ordered to turn over blueprints to the AMIA building to his Federal Police case officer.

The spy was convinced the building plans were used by the real culprits behind the bombing. His stunning revelation prompted a series of articles in the Argentine press.

The former infiltrator’s account provided the first clear indication that anti-Semitic veterans of Argentina’s “Dirty War” and their allies in the Argentine police and intelligence service orchestrated the explosion.

But Argentina’s legal system – still heavily influenced by the intelligence agency that influenced the official investigation to blame Iran and a prosecutor whose career had been based on that premise – stubbornly refused to investigate the former police spy’s account.

Infiltration, torture, anti-Semitic conspiracies

The former police infiltrator, Jose Alberto Perez, believed the AMIA building blueprints he had provided to the Federal Police were used by those who planned the bombing. He had learned from his police counter-terrorism training course that such building plans could be a valuable tool for planning such an operation.

Perez was also convinced that the bomb had detonated inside the building, rather than in front, and had been placed in the interior of the AMIA building through a gap between it and a neighboring building. Experts of Argentina’s Gendarmerie had come to the same conclusion, and leaked it to Clarin, Argentina’s largest tabloid, just two days after the bombing.

Perez also provided crucially evidence that those who had used him to spy on Jewish community leaders were motivated by the same anti-Semitic beliefs that had led the Argentine military dictatorship to single out Jews for especially cruel treatment during the “dirty war” in the 1970s: his case officer, whom he knew only as “Laura”, had ordered him to find out as much he could from the Jewish community about the so-called “Andinia Plan.”

According to that alleged plan, Jewish immigrants and foreign Zionists had been secretly plotting to take control of the vast Patagonia region of southern Argentina and create a Jewish state to be called “Andinia.”

The myth of the “Andinia Plan” followed the rise of anti-Semitism as a major social force in Argentina during the 1930s and became a staple of the anti-Semitic right’s narrative during the heyday of military domination of the Argentine society and politics from the 1960s through the “dirty war” against leftists in the 1970s.

At least 12 percent of those subjected to interrogation, torture, and murder during the dirty war were Jews, according to an investigation by the Barcelona-based Commission of Solidarity with Relatives of the Disappeared, although they represented only 1 percent of the population. Nearly all were interrogated about the “Andinia Plan.”

The crusading Argentine journalist Jacobo Timerman, who was born to Jewish parents and whose newspaper provided critical coverage of the military regime’s “dirty war,” was among those detained in the junta’s secret prisons.

Timerman recalled in his memoir how he was asked repeatedly to reveal what he knew about the “Andinia Plan” during extended interrogation and torture sessions. His interrogator refused to accept his answer that it was merely a fiction.

Meanwhile, Israel, which maintained strong military and political ties to the Argentine Junta throughout the dirty war remained silent about the Jewish journalist’s detention throughout the war.

“Iosi” goes to the press

Jose Alberto Perez, for his part, was wracked with guilt about having enabled the AMIA terror bombing. He had become an integral part of the Jewish community, studying Hebrew for three years, marrying a Jewish woman who was the secretary of an Israeli Embassy official and even taking the Jewish version of his Spanish surname, Jose. Within the Jewish community, he was known as “Iosi” Perez.

As he fell into despair, Iosi contacted investigative journalists Miriam Lewin and Horacio Lutzky to ask their help. The two journalists had tried for years to find a foreign sponsor to grant the former spy asylum abroad but to no avail.

Meanwhile, Iosi had secretly taped a video with the prominent Argentine journalist Gabriel Levinas in which he narrated his work penetrating the Jewish community and the unusual request for the blueprints. Levinas posted the video online in early July 2014, just prior to the publication of the second edition of his own book on the AMIA bombing, which included Iosi’s story.

The release of that video prompted Lewin and Lutzky to arrange for Iosi to join Argentina’s Witness Protection Program. The two journalists also urged Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who had spent a decade accusing Iran of the bombing, to meet Iosi in person.

But according to Lewin, Nisman would only agree to speak with Iosi on the phone. The prosecutor insisted on having three of his employees interview Iosi in person, she recalled in an interview with The Grayzone, then signed a declaration about that July 2014 meeting as though he had been present, and “did not show interest in interrogating him any further.” Iosi entered the Witness Protection Program the same day as the interview, according to Lewin.

Iosi’s Federal Police case officer “Laura,” who was retired by then, was released by the minister of security from the normal secrecy requirement about Iosi’s work. But she rejected Iosi’s testimony, according to Lewin, claiming his reports had been judged “poor.” Her claims stood in stark contrast to the actual reports obtained by prosecutors which clearly showed his findings had been evaluated as “excellent” year after year.

Lewin told The Grayzone she was confident that Iosi would have been able to provide “solid information about the local connection of the bombing,” but none of the four prosecutors who inherited the unsolved AMIA case after Nisman’s death were willing to follow up on the leads he provided.

Lewin noted that several of the senior Federal Police officials who would have been involved in the decisions to infiltrate the Jewish Community and request the AMIA blueprints were still active in 2015. That fact helps to explain why the case was left to die despite Iosi’s explosive revelations.

SIDE covers the junta’s back

Another key factor in the corruption of the AMIA investigation was the role of the state intelligence agency, known as SIDE, in influencing the lead prosecutor, Judge Juan Jose Galeano. Not only was a special unit within SIDE tasked with overseeing the Galeano’s investigation, another SIDE unit operated directly inside Galeano’s office, as journalist Sergio Kiernan reported.

SIDE proceeded to exploit its power to divert attention away from the logical suspects within the junta, circling the wagons to protect its own.

As Sergio Moreno and Laura Termine reported in the daily La Prensa, November 28, 1994, the SIDE unit handling the AMIA investigation was notorious for its hatred of Jews. The group consisted of veterans of the dirty war known as the “Cabildo” group, their name inspired by a right-wing anti-Semitic magazine published in the early 1980s that had republished an infamous tract detailing the “Andinia Plan” conspiracy.

The chief of the Cabildo group unsuccessfully sued Moreno and Termine for labeling his unit anti-Semitic. Following complaints by Jewish community leaders about the Cabildo group’s role in the AMIA investigation, it was removed from the case – but not before it deflected public attention away from leaders of the dirty war and onto an alleged Iranian conspiracy.

SIDE’s PR strategy depended on the theory that the AMIA explosion emanated from a vehicle-born suicide bomb, thereby casting suspicion on Iran and its ally, Hezbollah.

The intelligence services claimed a white light commercial van had been used in the bombing. Its engine was supposedly found in the rubble on April 25, a week after the explosion.

The identification number on the engine was traced to Carlos Alberto Telleldin, the Shia owner of a shady “chop shop” operation that rebuilt damaged cars for sale. Telleldin was accused of being an accessory to the terror plot and jailed on other charges.

But the official AMIA case files revealed that Telleldin had been targeted before the AMIA bombing. This stunning fact was noticed by a “private prosecutor” hired by the organization of AMIA victims Memoria Activa.

According to a close analysis of the official evidence by Alberto L. Zuppi, a request by Federal Police to wiretap Telleldin’s phone was issued on April 25 – at least five days before the alleged discovery of the engine that led investigators to blame Telleldin.

In the weeks that followed the AMIA explosion, more evidence surfaced that pointed to Telledin’s role as a patsy.

In September 1994, five Lebanese nationals were detained as they tried to leave Argentina for Paraguay. Through a series of leaks, SIDE planted stories in the media suggesting the suspects were linked to a terrorist network.

The following month, a part-time agent for SIDE and former chief of a notorious prison camp where suspects were tortured during the “dirty war,” Captain Hector Pedro Vergez, began visiting Telleldin in prison.

In four meetings between September 1994 and January 1995, Vergez offered the jailed suspect $1 million and his freedom if he would identify two of the Lebanese nationals who were then detained in Paraguay as having purchased the van from him – thus making it possible to accuse them of the bombing. But Telleldin refused to lie, and the SIDE plan was derailed.

It was not long, however, before SIDE and Galeano initiated a new plan to implicate two Buenos Aires provincial policemen as Iranian-sponsored culprits.

Resorting to bribery, Mossad info, and MEK sources to blame Iran

In July 1996, Juan Jose Galeano personally visited Carlos Telleldin in prison and offered him $400,000 to blame the two police officers. The scandalous scene was captured in a video shown on Argentine television in 1997.

SIDE was actively involved in the cover-up operation, with agency director Hugo Anzorreguy approving a direct payment to Telleldin’s wife.

The case against the two policemen was thrown out in court in 2004, but Galeano and Anzorreguy went unpunished for another 15 years. It was not until 2019 that they were sentenced to prison terms for their role in the affair, highlighting the culture of impunity that surrounded SIDE.

Once the Galeano case imploded, Alberto Nisman attempted to craft yet another narrative blaming Iran for the bombing. For this, he depended on information provided by Israel’s Mossad to Jaime Stiuso, the SIDE official in charge of counterintelligence.

Nisman’s 2006 indictment of seven Iranian officials for the terror plot relied completely on the claims of senior members of the Mujahedin-E-Khalq (MEK), the Israeli and Saudi-backed Iranian exile cult.

Not only were none of the MEK members in any position to provide reliable information about a supposedly high-level Iranian plot because they had been actively engaged in a terrorist campaign of their own against the Islamic government by helping Iraq’s then-President Saddam Hussein select targets in Iran.

Nisman’s reliance on such unscrupulous sources demonstrated his own apparent determination to reach preordained conclusions about Iran’s guilt. It was hardly a surprise, then, that Nisman ignored Iosi’s revelatory testimony.

Nisman’s other major source, Jaime Stiuso of SIDE, was a notorious manipulator who had spent years collecting wiretaps on Argentine politicians. In 2014, the intelligence chief was working to build a case against President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner for supposedly conspiring with Iran to eliminate the official Argentine accusation of Iranian guilt. Few observers believed the case would hold up under close scrutiny.

In January 2015, Nisman was found dead in his apartment of a gunshot wound to the head. Though political opponents of Kirchner were convinced the prosecutor’s death was the result of a government-sponsored murder, a recent documentary detailing the various investigations of his death, “Nisman: el fiscal, la presidenta y El espía,” concluded that he had committed suicide.

By the time of his death, Nisman was helping direct a disinformation campaign that allowed SIDE to cover for shadowy figures from Argentina’s violently anti-Semitic past, and to bury their likely role in the AMIA bombing.

Iosi’s testimony should have ended that cover-up, but Nisman, SIDE, and the Federal Police colluded to quash a serious investigation.

A quarter-century after the bombing, impunity for the real AMIA terrorists continues.

Gareth Porter, an investigative historian, and journalist specializing in US national security policy received the UK-based Gellhorn Prize for journalism for 2011 for articles on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. His new book is Manufactured Crisis: the Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare. He can be contacted at porter.gareth50@gmail.com.