"Illegal": Iran Slams Argentina's Bid To Arrest Minister Over 1994 Bombing Attack

Iran on Wednesday condemned as "illegal" Argentina's request for Interpol to arrest Iran's interior minister over a 1994 bombing attack on a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani "strongly condemned the repetition of illegal requests based on lies... by some Argentine judges about Iranian nationals in the AMIA case," a statement from the ministry said.

On April 12, a court in Argentina placed blame on Iran for the 1994 attack against the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires and for a bombing two years earlier against the Israeli embassy, which killed 29 people.

The Argentinean foreign ministry on Tuesday said the Iranian minister, Ahmad Vahidi, was part of a delegation from Tehran visiting Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and Interpol has issued a red notice seeking his arrest at the request of Argentina.

Argentina has also asked those two governments to arrest Vahidi, it added in a statement.

But Iran's official news agency IRNA reported that Vahidi was back in Iran on Tuesday, where he attended a ceremony to induct a provincial governor.

An official from Sri Lanka's foreign ministry told AFP that Vahidi was not listed as part of an Iranian delegation that arrived in the country on Wednesday.

"The accusations made in the AMIA case against Iranian citizens lacked any validity," the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said.

Iran "supports the execution of justice and the prosecution of those who, by destroying documents, caused serious deviations in the course of the AMIA case and escaped punishment for this incident," he added.

Kanani also urged the Argentine authorities to avoid "making baseless accusations against the citizens of other countries and not to be influenced by the enemies of the bilateral relations between Iran and Argentina".

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