Argentina's Menem charged with obstructing bomb probe

Former Argentine president Carlos Menem was charged with leading a cover-up in the 1994 bombing of a building housing Jewish charities that killed 85 people.

Some 300 people were also wounded in the attack that leveled the seven-floor Argentine Jewish Mutual Association (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires. No one has ever been convicted for the bombing.

Federal Judge Ariel Lijo charged Menem, 79, with "instigating" several crimes, including concealing and tampering with evidence and abusing authority to cover up what was then called a "Syrian connection."

Menem, who is involved in several corruption and arms smuggling cases linked to his 1989-1999 presidency, enjoys congressional immunity shielding him from any arrest as senator from his home province of La Rioja.

Prosecutor Alberto Nisman asked Lijo last May to indict Menem and his former officials, accusing them of "aggravated concealment" of a "local connection" that provided the logistics to carry out the attack.

Nisman alleged that Menem, who was born in Argentina to Syrian immigrants, and his former staff stole evidence to hide the involvement of Syrian-Argentine businessman Alberto Kanoore Edul in the AMIA bombing, and destroyed evidence that would have incriminated him.

Former judge Juan Jose Galeano, who was in charge of the investigation for 10 years but was dismissed from the case in 2004, had prosecuted Edul as an alleged participant, but ultimately cleared and released him.

Galeano was also charged in the cover-up, along with Menem's brother, former top intelligence officers and police.

Prosecutors claim that Edul was linked to Carlos Telledin, who served a 10-year prison term for having armed the car bomb that blew up the Jewish center but was then cleared of the charges in 2005. In May, the Supreme Court ordered a new investigation into Telledin.

Buenos Aires accuses Iran of having masterminded the car bombing and of using the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to execute it.

Interpol has issued "red notices" at Argentina's request seeking the extradition of a Lebanese national and five Iranians, including Ahmad Vahidi -- the current Iranian minister of defense and then-head of Al Quds, a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps that operates overseas.

Argentine prosecutors had also sought an arrest warrant against then-Iranian president Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, a request rejected by the world police body.

The bombing was the worst attack of its kind in Argentina, which has the largest Jewish community in the Americas outside the United States, and the second large-scale anti-Jewish strike in Buenos Aires that decade.

In 1992, the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires was leveled in a bombing that killed 22 people and wounded 200.

As part of his investigation of irregularities that took place during the first government inquiry into the July 9, 1994 bombing, Lijo also charged the ex-president's brother Munir Menem, former intelligence services chief Hugo Anzorregui and Galeano, the retired judge.

Other defendants included former deputy secretary of intelligence Juan Carlos Anchezar and former commissioner Jorge Palacios, who also headed the Antiterrorism Unit and was forced to resign from his post as Buenos Aires police chief on suspicion of concealing evidence in the AMIA case.

The government's mishandling of the investigation came under fire in 2005 by Menem's successor, Nestor Kirchner, a political rival whose wife is now president.

Menem, a two-term president from the ruling Peronist party, was once wildly popular, and his fondness for fast cars and women half his age and almost twice his height amused rather than angered Argentines.

But his popularity faded as corruption scandals emerged, his tough free-market policies alienated his electorate and the economy deteriorated.

The former president also faces charges in a separate case involving his role in a scheme to smuggle weapons to Croatia and Ecuador while both countries were involved in wars in the 1990s.