Families reiterate call for justice on 27th anniversary of AMIA bombing

Families of the victims of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that left 85 dead and hundreds wounded on Sunday renewed their demands for justice as they marked the anniversary of the horror attack.

Argentina's 300,000-strong Jewish community – the largest in South America – remains angry that no-one has ever been convicted over the bombing.

The virtual event was organised by the Memoria Activa civil association under the motto: "27 years without justice, full of memories."

President Alberto Fernández paid tribute to the family members who "remain strong in their demand for truth and justice."

"In memory of every one of [the victims] and in honour of those that lost their loved ones, we must unite against impunity," he wrote on Twitter.

The bombing at the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) a community centre in the nation's capital remains the deadliest terror strike in the country's history.

The initial investigation was botched and tainted by allegations of corruption.

In 2006, special prosecutor Alberto Nisman took over the investigation and accused then-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – now Argentina's vice-president – of a cover-up.

He accused Iran of ordering the attack via the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, but his efforts to prosecute five Iranian officials, including former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, were cut short when Fernández de Kirchner's government signed a deal with Iran to set up a Tehran-based joint commission to investigate the attacks.

Iran has never allowed its officials to be interviewed, although the country's Parliament also rejected the Kirchner deal.

Nisman accused Fernández de Kirchner of trying to arrange the deal in exchange for oil and trade benefits, basing his accusations on hundreds of hours of wiretaps. But just before he was due to present his findings to Congress in January 2015, Nisman died at his home in mysterious circumstances.

Fernández de Kirchner is nonetheless under investigation, accused of covering up the bombing and treason.

On Friday she asked that the case be dropped, calling it a "political scandal" and claiming that it was being used as "an instrument of persecution of the political opponents of the Mauricio Macri government" that followed hers.

– TIMES/AFP