Testifying in a public setting for the first time, a defector from Iran’s intelligence agency has accused a group of senior government officials in Tehran of having “led, orchestrated and executed” a bomb attack on a Jewish community center in Argentina that killed 85 people and wounded 200 almost a decade ago. “A special committee under the direction” of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s spiritual leader, “made the decision to initiate an attack in Buenos Aires,” the Iranian agent, Abdolghassem Mesbahi, told Argentine lawyers during eight hours of court testimony on Wednesday. Mr. Mesbahi, who is living in exile in Germany, was testifying in English via a video link to the Argentine Embassy in Berlin, according to Argentine broadcast and Internet news accounts from people who were inside the courtroom. The death toll from the explosion of a powerful car bomb on July 18, 1994, outside the Argentine Jewish Mutual Aid Association, known by the Spanish acronym AMIA, is the highest from an anti-Semitic incident anywhere since World War II. The attack came two years after 28 people died in a similar explosion outside the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires that Mr. Mesbahi has said previously was also organized by Iran. Full Story
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