Argentine Phone Calls Detail Efforts to Shield Iran New York Times (01/22/15) P. A1 Gilbert, Jonathan; Romero, Simon Transcripts of intercepted conversations between Iranian and Argentine representatives indicate that the two governments have long been engaged in secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center. An Argentine judge made the transcripts public on Tuesday night as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor who was found dead in his apartment the night before he was to present his findings to Congress. Before his death, Nisman described intercepted telephone conversations that outline an elaborate effort by Iran to reward Argentina for shipping food and for seeking to derail the investigation into the terrorist attack. The complaint says that the deal never actually happened, partly because Argentine officials could not persuade Interpol to lift the arrest warrants against those Iranian officials who were wanted in connection with the attack. It is believed that Argentine intelligence officials intercepted the phone conversations, which, if shown to be accurate, would demonstrate that representatives of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s government attempted to move suspicions away from Iran in order to gain access to Iranian markets and oil. In one transcript from 2013, an Argentine union leader and supporter of Kirchner said he was acting on the orders of the “boss woman” and mentioned that the government was open to sending a team from the national oil company to the negotiations. In another intercepted transcript, negotiators discuss ways to blame the bombing on right-wing groups and activists.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Jan 2015 01:25:03 +0000
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