Sen. Patrick Leahy urges State Dept. to grant former Argentine Foreign Minister Timerman a visa
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy issued a statement urging the State Department to reverse its decision to deny former Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman a visa.
Timerman, 64, had scheduled a flight to New York on January 9 to seek treatment for liver cancer. He was, however, informed upon boarding that the United States Government had denied him entry.
Leahy noted Timerman's efforts “to create an international commission of jurists with powers to review evidence against Iranians accused by the Argentine judiciary of responsibility for the bombing, and to interrogate some suspects,” as well as his delicate health.
Timerman has been under house arrest since December 14 on the orders of Argentine Federal Judge Claudio Bonadío on “treason” charges. The treason charges were overturned on appeal, though a separate charge of concealment was upheld.
The charges stem from the Memorandum of Understanding Timerman signed with Iran in 2013 for a joint investigation of the AMIA bombing, a still-unsolved 1994 incident in which 85 died in a Buenos Aires Jewish community center.
Timerman noted, however, that before the agreement “the investigation into the attack was so flawed and corrupt that in 2004 the entire trial was annulled and the judge who led it was put under investigation. Judge Bonadío — who now accuses me of treason — led the investigation into that cover-up but was removed from it in 2005.”
Bonadío's charges rest on allegations that Timerman petitioned Interpol to lift Red Notices against Iranian officials implicated in the AMIA attack - a claim rejected by the former Secretary General of Interpol, Ronald Noble.
The three year-old claim, dismissed by Argentine courts in seven instances - including two appeals - was revived on December 6 by the judge.
“A biased Judge Bonadío report cannot change the truth,” Noble tweeted. “INTERPOL was never asked by Argentina or Timerman to remove the AMIA Red Notices!” He offered to testify in Argentina to that effect.
CELS, a prominent Argentine human rights organization, condemned the “use of the penal system to persecute political opponents” by the right-wing Mauricio Macri administration.
“Sadly, it is not the first time my family has been a victim of political persecution,” he said. “Forty years ago, my father, the journalist Jacobo Timerman, was kidnapped and tortured in clandestine centers run by my country’s last dictatorship.”
Senator Leahy was instrumental in securing the elder Timerman's release in 1979.
At: https://www.leahy.senate.gov/press/statement-on-hector-timerman
Former Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman
