RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The VP of Argentina, Cristina Kirchner, announced on Tuesday that she requested the nullity of the case on the memorandum of understanding with Iran, in which she is prosecuted for the alleged cover-up of the Iranians accused of the bombing of the AMIA Jewish community in 1994.
The nullity claim, which the also former president (2007-2015) published on her Twitter profile, alleges, among other reasons, political interference in the process, specifically due to the alleged meetings that, according to social organizations, took place between the former president Mauricio Macri (2015-2019) and two of the judges who intervened in the case, Gustavo Hornos and Mariano Borinsky.
“It should be noted that several of the meetings that Hornos and Borinsky held with former President Macri are chronologically related to important decisions that were issued by those same judges in the ‘Memorandum’ case,” the brief highlights.
The organization “Poder ciudadano” published weeks ago a list with six visits of Judge Hornos to the Government House. In comparison, a local media conducted an investigation that includes 15 visits of Borinsky to the presidential residence in Olivos during Macri’s term of office.
“Before those dates and while the ‘Memorandum’ case continued with its development, both Hornos and Borinsky visited Macri on several occasions, either at the Olivos country house or at the Government House. In fact, the meetings continued to be repeated assiduously until the end of the presidential term,” the text adds.
In a video that accompanies the publication of the document, Fernandez targets these two judges because “in a scandalous ruling they literally resurrected the memorandum case with Iran. Almost two years before, different judges of the same federal court had closed the case for the non-existence of a crime”.
With this argument of “lack of independence and impartiality with which the aforementioned judges acted in this case”, the defense requests “that the order of summons to trial be annulled and that all the persons who have been unjustly accused in this process be dismissed, with the express mention that the formation of this case in no way affects their good name and honor”.
The memorandum with Iran was signed on January 27, 2013, with Kirchner as president, and includes the creation of a special commission to investigate jointly between the two countries the attack against the Jewish AMIA community, which left 85 dead and which the Argentine courts attribute to former high officials of the Iranian Government and the Lebanese Shiite party Hezbollah.
Prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was later found dead in his home with a gunshot to the head, denounced in 2015 Kirchner, her foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, and other high-ranking officials for an alleged negotiation, through the agreement, to cover up for the fugitive Iranians accused of the attack by eliminating Interpol red alerts for their arrest.
The memorandum never entered into force because, although the Argentine Congress sanctioned it, it was never approved in Iran.