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ARGENTINA | 18-07-2018 10:51

AMIA: Relatives gather for anniversary of Argentina's worst terrorist attack

The theme of this year’s official commemorative event is: “In times of impunity, remembrance is akin to demanding justice”.

The entrance of the headquarters of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA), on Pasteur street in Buenos Aires, will today host three events to commemorate the 24th anniversary of Argentina’s worst ever terrorist attack.

The AMIA and Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas (DAIA) will host the official event to call for justice and an end to the impunity surrounding the so-far unsolved case into the 1994 bombing that took the lives of 85 people and left more than 300 wounded.

Memoria Activa and 18J, two victim splinter groups, will also gather at Pasteur street to recall the July 18, 1994 attack. The other of the three groups, APEMIA, decided not to participate in or hold any events this year.

The theme of this year’s official event is: “In times of impunity, remembrance is akin to demanding justice”.

Speaker will include AMIA president Agustín Zbar; the Secretary General of the Organisation of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro; and Mario Averbuch, the father of Yanina Muriel, one of the victims of the explosion. Yanina was a 20-year-old student who worked in AMIA’s social services department. 

The event will begin at 9:53, the exact time of the explosion that destroyed the AMIA headquarters. Television journalist Luis Novaresio will be the master of ceremony. National and City Hall authorities, diplomats, relatives of victims and survivors, community leaders, and leaders from the political and judicial spheres, among others, are also expected to attend.

President Mauricio Macri will not attend the event, but will meet with Zbar at the Casa Rosada this morning. 

As in previous years, the names of each of the victims will be read out loud, a candle will be lit and a rose placed in their honour.

Three years and six months after the death of the former head of UFI AMIA investigative unit, prosecutor Alberto Nisman, Sara Garfunkel, Nisman’s mother, will also light a candle in his honour. 

At 4.30, the 18J Association of Relatives, survivors and friends of the victims of the AMIa bombing will call for Remembrance, Truth and Justice, “hoping that the first is maintained in time, the second is reached and the third becomes a reality”, 18J’s leadership said in a statement.

Memoria Activa, meanwhile, will hold their event at 6.30pm to demand justice and denounce cover-ups. Journalist Néstor Espósito, comedians Roberto and Eial Moldavsky, lawyer Rodrigo Borda and Memoria Activa’s Diana Wassner, will speak at the event. Wassner was the wife of Andrés Malamud, an architect who was leading a restoration project on the building at the time of the bombing, making him of one of the fatal 85 victims of the attack. 

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Cecilia Devanna

Cecilia Devanna

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