The AMIA bombing occurred on 18 July 1994 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and targeted the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA; transl. "Argentine Israelite Mutual Association"), a Jewish Community Centre. Executed as a suicidal attack, a bomb-laden van was driven into the AMIA building and subsequently detonated, killing 85 people and injuring over 300. To date, the bombing remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentine history. In 1994, Argentina was home to a Jewish community of 200,000, making it the largest in Latin America and the sixth-largest in the world outside of Israel.Over the years, the AMIA bombing has been marked by accusations of cover-ups. All suspects in the "local connection" (among them, many members of the Buenos Aires Provincial Police) were found to be not guilty in September 2004. In August 2005, federal judge Juan José Galeano, who was in charge of the case, was impeached and removed from his post on a charge of "serious irregularities" due to his mishandling of the investigation. In 2005, Catholic Church cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis in 2013, was the first public personality to sign a petition for justice in the AMIA bombing case. He was one of the signatories on a document called "85 victims, 85 signatures" as part of the bombing's 11th anniversary.On 25 October 2006, Argentine prosecutors Alberto Nisman and Marcelo Martínez Burgos formally accused the Iranian government of directing the bombing, and the Lebanese Islamist militant group Hezbollah of carrying it out. According to the prosecution's claims in 2006, Argentina had been targeted by Iran after Buenos Aires' decision to suspend a nuclear technology transfer contract to Tehran. This has been disputed as the contract was never terminated, and Iran and Argentina were negotiating on the restoration of full cooperation on all bilateral agreements from early 1992 until 1994, when the bombing occurred.In 2015, Alberto Nisman filed a 300-page document accusing former Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of covering up Iran's role in the incident. However, Nisman was murdered hours before he was due to testify against the former president, which the Federal Court of Buenos Aires ruled was a “direct consequence” of Nisman's accusations against Kirchner. In 2017, Argentine judge Claudio Bonadio accused Kirchner of treason and called on the Argentine Senate to permit her arrest and trial for allegedly covering up Iranian involvement in the 1994 attack. In 2021, the case against Kirchner was unanimously declared legally null and void by an Argentine federal court; the court found there to be no wrongdoing on Kirchner's part.The 13th anniversary of the bombing was commemorated on 18 July 2007. In addition to nationwide exhibitions and ceremonies, radio and television stations and police cars all across Argentina sounded sirens at 9:53 a.m., which marked the time of the AMIA bombing. In 2019, Argentina officially designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
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