Mass trial may expose shadowy terror world

BUENOS AIRES - Seven years after the bombing of an Argentine Jewish centre killed 85 people, a mass trial began yesterday that could help expose the shadowy world of Islamic militants in the wake of this month's attacks on the United States.

Twenty defendants face charges related to the deadly 1994 car bombing, which also injured hundreds and which Israel and the US suspect was organised by Iranian-backed Middle Eastern guerrillas. Charges against the defendants range from being accomplices to providing the vehicle used in the attack.

Police have yet to charge anyone with the actual bombing, which came after the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires was bombed in 1992.

Jewish leaders believe the suicide airliner attacks in the US that destroyed the towering World Trade Center and sliced through the Pentagon may have been mounted by the same group that attacked their community.

"What happened here could have been a precursor to what happened in the US," said Jewish leader Hugo Ostrower of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) community centre, hit by the 1994 bombing.

The trial's opening, at a specially fortified courtroom in downtown Buenos Aires, was taken up with reading of legal documents related to the charges. The court hearing itself is suspected to last at least six months.

Security measures were visibly beefed up in the wake of the US hijackings and crashes, in which nearly 7000 people are feared dead. Members of the public needed special accreditation to attend the hearing in a sealed courtroom, and dozens of armed police officers flanked the court building.

Argentina's 300,000-strong Jewish community - the biggest in Latin America and the seventh-largest in the world - were elated that the case, which has gained even more resonance after the US attacks, had finally come to trial.

"We have now been struggling for 375 Mondays to ensure we get justice and that this never happens again," said 60-year-old leather worker Benjamin Guz - whose family moved to Argentina from Lithuania in the 1920s - referring to weekly vigils held by the Buenos Aires' Jewish community.

"Whether it be Allah or God, it is all one. There is no justification for fundamentalists in either the Koran, the Torah or the Bible," added his companion, optician Claudio Absy.

Of the 20 people on trial, five face charges directly linked to the attack. The other 15 face minor charges, and their lawyers say there is no evidence directly linking them to the bombing.

The five main defendants - former policemen Juan Jose Ribelli, Mario Norberto Barreiro, Anastacio Irineo Leal and Raul Edilio Ibarra, plus car salesman Carlos Alberto Telleldin - are suspected of being accomplices in the car bombing of the community centre.

- REUTERS

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