Miguel Bronfman, the attorney representing the AMIA-DAIA asked today that Carlos Telleldin be sentenced to 20 years in prison for delivering the Trafic van, vehicle armed as a car-bomb that exploded on July 18, 1994 at the Jewish mutual association building in Buenos Aires. He did so in their arguments before the Federal Oral Court 3 (TOF3), which judges Telleldín in the second trial for the terror-attack that caused 85 deaths and that is considered the worst terrorist attack in Argentina’s history, in which they also asked “Immediate arrest” of Telleldín if he is convicted to avoid a possible escape. Telledin faces charges for the crime of negligent damage aggravated by the 85 people who died in the attack and 300 people injured.
In his plea, Bronfman criticized Telleldín’s strategy of refusing to testify, which he described as “complicit silence” and recounted other cases of international terrorism in which the refusal to speak was taken as an indication of guilt. “Telleldín handed over the murder weapon to the terrorists and was the first detainee in the AMIA case, as he was the last known fork of the truck that was used as a car bomb in the attack against the AMIA,” said Bronfman.
Telleldín is prosecuted for alleged “aggravated homicide, injuries, damages and illicit association” and was already imprisoned for 9 years, so for him to return to jail the TOF should apply a greater penalty than the years in which he was already detained, estimated sources of the complaint. “We are convinced – the unified complaint of the AMIA-DAIA said – that the defendant Telleldín prepared, conditioned and delivered the Renault Trafic truck with full knowledge and willingness to participate in a crime; he knew perfectly well, as we shall see, that that truck was most likely going to be used to cause an explosion, and he knew and accepted that this explosion was going to cause deaths ”.
“Gentlemen: Telleldín is not guilty because he lies; he lies because he is guilty,” said Bronfman who was assisted by his colleague Gabriel Camiser. In his allegation of three hours, he recalled that on July 15, 1994, the then Iranian cultural attaché, Moshé Rabbani, “was monitoring that section of the operation” which was the Trafic parking lot in the Jet Parking parking lot, near the AMIA . “It is also proven that the people who entered the van -there were at least two- were not foreigners, since no employee of the parking lot said that.”
Then he asked himself: “Who were these people? Who did Telleldín deliver the truck to? Who has he been and continues to protect all these years? Where has the truck been since the defendant delivered it, between 9 and 10 of July, and on July 15 when it was seen again? and what was the origin of the explosives? Those are some of the questions that remain unanswered, he said. More than 26 after the attack, “we continue thinking exactly the same thing: the investigation regarding the local connection has been poor, extremely poor, and the number of unresolved questions yet, who knows if they will have an answer some day, “added Bronfman.
The TOF 3, with a different composition, acquitted ex-commissioner Juan José Ribelli and three other ex-Buenos Aires policemen in 2004 as a local connection to the attack.
He pointed out that Telleldín said “in his statement at the beginning of the trial: the same false version full of lies, relating to the supposed buyer named Ramón Martínez”, with a foreign ID of a person who does not exist and who according to different versions was “Central American” or “Chinese”.
Furthermore, it would not have folded just two Trafics, as it did with other vehicles, but three. “Only Telleldín knows in which chassis he placed the“ M ”engine (by its previous owner Messin).
As a result of the preceding, Telleldín had to build another one, in addition to the truck built by Nitzcaner, – in which the engine was placed – and which was the one that exploded at the AMIA / DAIA headquarters ”.
In the first trial, the existence of at least three car bodies was mentioned: one of Messin (burned), one of Sarapura (stolen and repaired at Nitzcaner’s) and a third one, still undetermined, to which the Messin’s engine was installed and that was ultimately the one used as a car bomb,” he added.
On the other hand, Telleldín’s daughter, Miriam Salinas, testified that, after the attack, “Ana Boragni told her that Telleldín was locked in a room in the house with a fit of hysteria over the sale of the Trafic, shouting“ these sons of a bitch… they screwed up my life ”. Then she went to Posadas. “It is clear by now that the defendant knew perfectly well that her truck was involved in the murder of 85 people; far from appearing in court – as would anyone who makes a “normal” sale of a car – he escaped, and escaped to a nearby place; a foreign country, “added the plaintiff.
The choice of Telleldín by “the authors or other participants in the attack, was not accidental. Telleldín was chosen for its particular characteristics already described and proven in the debate. The author or authors needed Telleldín, not just any usual used car salesman and preparer ”. Telleldín’s father was accused of having been a member of the Comando Libertadores de América, an arm of Triple A (Alianza Anticomunista Argentina), responsible for the illegal repression in that province before the coup of March 24, 1976. And Telleldín Jr. had a record. On the other hand, “the silence that Telleldín keeps in relation to a series of objective facts of reality that cannot have been unknown to him, is proof in itself not only of his guilt, but of his shameless intention to hide the truth. And only he who knows the truth can hide the truth, ”Bronfman concluded.
Next week will be his plea to the complaint of the relatives of the victims of the attack.
For his part, the president of the AMIA Ariel Eichbaum said that “after more than 26 years, we are facing a transcendent moment that we have been long awaiting, and the possibility of obtaining a conviction in the AMIA case ”. “We always maintained that Telleldín knew who he had given the truck to, and this trial has corroborated it. We trust that the Prosecutor’s Office, headed by prosecutor Roberto Salum, will ask for the maximum penalty for the accused when he makes his statement, and that the Court will sentence the person who participated in the attack by providing the car bomb ”, emphasized the president of AMIA .
Just one week after the bomb explosion in Pasteur 633, Carlos Telleldín was arrested accused of having conditioned with a change of shock absorbers and delivered the Trafic truck loaded with 300 kilos of ammonal and driven by a suicidal driver that the Justice believes was a member of Hezbollah. After his first trial in 2004, in which he was controversially acquitted, the Supreme Court ordered in 2009 that he be tried again. “Eleven years have passed and only now are we close to sentencing,” Eichbaum said. The final arguments in the second oral trial for the AMIA attack began this Wednesday in the Retiro courts with a single defendant, Telleldín, as an alleged necessary participant in the terrorist attack that was carried out by a Lebanese Hezbollah cell with intelligence support from five Iranians according to Argentine justice.
The debate had resumed virtually on June 23 with only one of the three judges of the Court present in Comodoro Py 2002, amid the coronavirus pandemic and after being suspended on March 20. The complainant had anticipated that he will request a conviction for the former car reducer, prosecuted as the one who delivered the Trafic truck used as a car bomb ten days before the attack, in an operation that he always said was a sale and on whom the accusations fell. Telleldín used to sell “twin cars” before the attack and became a lawyer. Justice accuses him of bending stolen vehicles with authentic papers of cars crashed with total destruction.
Telleldín was tried and acquitted – along with a former Buenos Aires policeman – in a first trial in 2003, when, with another composition of judges, the TOF 3 annulled the case because it understood that the accusations responded to the theory of the “fruit of the poisoned tree.”
At that time, the Court considered it proven that Telleldín, imprisoned from 1994 to 2004, involved five policemen from Buenos Aires, including former commissioner Juan José Ribelli, after collecting $ 400,000 from the SIDE of the Carlos Menem government.
After successive appeals, the Supreme Court of Justice reversed part of that verdict in 2009 and considered valid what had been investigated up to the moment of that illegal payment, ordered that Telleldín be charged again and a new oral trial was carried out.
The TOF3 judges, Andrés Basso, Javier Rios and Fernando Canero, listened to a hundred witnesses from the beginning of the oral debate and dozens of statements of survivors and relatives of victims made in the first trial were also incorporated in writing. In 2019, Telleldín was also sentenced to three years and six months in prison and to return the $400,000 illegally collected to involve five Buenos Aires policemen in the “local connection” of the attack.
In this trial for the crimes committed in the investigation of the attack, the dismissed former federal judge Juan José Galeano, the first who investigated the cause that is the basis of this accusation against Telleldín, was also sentenced to six years in prison, although the penalties are not firm and are reviewed in the Federal Criminal Cassation Chamber.
For the attack there are seven international arrest warrants from Interpol issued to Iranian citizens as alleged ideologues of the attack, whose investigation changed judge this year. For the alleged cover-up of five Iranians, through the Pact with Iran, Vice President Cristina Kirchner is prosecuted in the attack in another oral trial that should begin at the end of the year, before the resignation to retire of the judge who succeeded Galeano, Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, the new magistrate in charge of the case is María Eugenia Capuchetti.