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sandensea

(21,530 posts)
Sun Dec 30, 2018, 01:55 PM Dec 2018

Former Argentine Foreign Minister Hector Timerman dies at age 65

Héctor Timerman, whose tenure as Argentine Foreign Minister between 2010 and 2015 was best known for his efforts to create an international truth commission on the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, which killed 85, died this morning. He was 65.

Since leaving office three years ago, Timerman fought not only liver cancer but also attempts by the right-wing Mauricio Macri administration to have him jailed on “treason” charges related to his AMIA truth commission efforts - which Israel opposes.

“Sadly, it is not the first time my family has been a victim of political persecution,” he wrote in the New York Times last year.

“Forty years ago, my father, the journalist Jacobo Timerman, was kidnapped and tortured by my country’s last dictatorship.”

U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy noted Timerman's efforts “to create an international commission of jurists with powers to review evidence against Iranians accused by the Argentine judiciary of responsibility for the bombing, and to interrogate some suspects.”

Father's footsteps

The elder Timerman, a Ukranian Jew who emigrated to Argentina with his parents as a child in 1928, went on to become a prominent news daily and magazine publisher - a career his son Héctor, born in 1953, later pursued as editor in one of his father's dailies.

Like his father, he followed a centrist editorial line but ran afoul of Argentina's recurring military regimes for criticizing human rights abuses.

Following Jacobo Timerman's detention in 1977 and the seizure of his property and businesses, Héctor Timerman fled to New York, where in 1981 he co-founded Americas Watch, the Western Hemisphere counterpart to what later became Human Rights Watch.

He returned to Argentina in 1989, resuming journalism and eventually earning an appointment by then-President Cristina Kirchner as Ambassador to the U.S. in 2007 and as Foreign Minister in 2010 - the first Jew to hold either post.

Truth to power

Timerman refocused efforts on the still-unsolved 1994 AMIA bombing, the most deadly foreign terrorist incident in Argentine history, and sought Iran's cooperation through a Memorandum of Understanding signed in 2013.

The 2013 memorandum was supported by the Obama administration, the Argentine Congress, and all three AMIA victims' rights groups.

It was, however, fiercely opposed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and was eventually rejected by Iran itself.

Prior to the 2013 agreement, Timerman noted, “the investigation into the attack was so flawed and corrupt that in 2004 the entire trial was annulled and the judge who led it removed. Judge Claudio Bonadío — who now accuses me of treason — led the investigation into that cover-up but was removed for malfeasance in 2005.”

A close Macri ally, Bonadío's claims, dismissed by Argentine courts in seven instances including two appeals, were refuted by former INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald Noble.

“A biased Judge Bonadío report cannot change the truth,” Noble tweeted in 2017. “INTERPOL was never asked to remove the AMIA Red Notices!” He offered to testify in Argentina to that effect.

“Héctor Timerman was a man of integrity: dedicated to his beloved Argentina and to its people,” Noble tweeted today. “He died under a cloud of false accusations because Argentina's judiciary failed to conduct a thorough investigation.”

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&tab=wT&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.infonews.com%2Fnota%2F320859%2Ffallecio-a-los-65-anos-el-ex-canciller



Former Argentine Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman and former Interpol Secretary General Ronald Noble discuss the AMIA bombing case in 2013.

Noble lauded Timerman's efforts to revive long-dormant AMIA investigation, and offered to testify in Argentina on his behalf. Like Timerman, he was instead subjected to a smear campaign on right-wing Argentine media.
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