Iran condemned this Wednesday the request for the arrest of the Iranian Minister of the Interior, Ahmad Vahidi, by the Government of Argentina for his alleged relationship with the attack perpetrated in 1994 against the headquarters of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people died. The Islamic Republic “strongly condemned the reiteration of illegal requests based on lies (…) by some Argentine judges regarding Iranian citizens for the AMIA case,” said the spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry in Tehran, Nasser Kanani, in a statement.
On April 12, the Argentine Justice determined that the attacks on the Israeli embassy in 1992 and the Jewish mutual AMIA in 1994 in the center of Buenos Aires were ordered by Iran. On Tuesday, the Argentine Foreign Ministry called for Vahidi’s international arrest. The Interpol Central Office issued a red notice for Vahidi’s arrest at the request of Argentina, which in turn requested the governments of Pakistan and Sri Lanka to proceed with the arrest, according to a statement from the Argentine Foreign Ministry.
Vahidi accompanied Iranian President Ebrahim Raissi on a state visit to Pakistan earlier this week. The president continued his tour on Wednesday to Sri Lanka, but this time without his Interior Minister. Ahmad Vahidi is not part of the Iranian delegation in Sri Lanka, the island nation’s authorities told AFP. Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported that Vahidi had returned to Iran on Tuesday to attend an inauguration ceremony for a provincial governor.
Lieutenant General Vahidi was appointed Minister of the Interior in 2021 after being Minister of Defense during the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, but at the time of the attack in Buenos Aires he was commander of the Quds Force, the covert operations unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard . Iran denies any involvement in the attacks and opposes the interrogation of the eight former officials accused by the Argentine justice system.
“The accusations made in the framework of the AMIA case against Iranian citizens lack any validity,” Kanani said. Iran “supports justice and the prosecution of those who, by destroying documents, caused serious irregularities in the development of the AMIA case and who evaded punishment for that incident,” she added.
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