Jewish leaders were skeptical about the report, and angry about the way it has been handled

Photo: AP Images

A new chapter in the tragic story of the deadliest attack against Jews since the end of World War II was written last week.

A former Mossad agent appearing on an Israeli television program claimed that he provided Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman with evidence in 2015 proving that then-president of Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner was engaged in a cover-up regarding Iran’s bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in 1994, an attack that killed 85 people.

Uzi Shaya told Ilana Dayan, the host of the news show Uvda, that he provided Nisman documents showing that Iran had transferred millions of dollars to accounts belonging to Kirchner’s son and other relatives in the Cayman Islands, Seychelles, and Cyprus. The payments were made to halt a government probe into the bombings, which have since been directly linked to Hezbollah, and its sponsor Iran. Weeks after Nisman received the documents, and one day before Nisman was set to testify against Kirchner, he was found dead in his apartment.

Now an Argentine prosecutor pursuing the Nisman case says he wants testimony from Shaya and Dayan. Kirchner is currently Argentina’s vice president.

“I’ll cooperate wherever I have to, in Argentina or anywhere, but all I have to say is what I said on TV,” Ilana Dayan told Mishpacha.

During the interview, the former Mossad agent said he provided the information to Nisman in order to put pressure on Kirchner. At the time, Shaya was affiliated with a hedge fund, Elliott Partners, that was owed billions by the Argentine government. The fund, owned by American Jewish billionaire Paul Singer, hoped the information, or threat of its release, would pressure Kirchner into paying the fund its money.

“Nisman turned into a toy in the hands of ‘big business,’ ” said Dayan, who explained that he worked indirectly for the fund. Shaya further insisted that he did not provide the information to Nisman in order to assist him in the AMIA case, but to pressure Kirchner.

“I think Nisman would take any information that could be useful for him in order to win his battle against Cristina Kirchner,” Dayan said.

The report had immediate repercussions in Argentina. The prosecutor working on the Nisman case, Eduardo Taiano, demanded that Dayan and Shaya turn over all relevant documents and testify. But Jewish leaders were skeptical about the report, and angry about the way it has been handled.

“I know Uvda is a prestigious program, but I don’t think the report was serious,” Ariel Eichbaum, AMIA’s president, told Mishpacha. “If you have something to report, you should [tell prosecutors]. This is a very sensitive issue, there is a lot of pain involved, and [neither Shaya or Dayan] showed any document proving anything. We are talking about international terrorism! What’s the point of publicizing this kind of information? What should have been done with this is to take it to [Argentine prosecutors], not to air it on TV.”

Eichbaum said that the interview only added “noise” to the case, and potentially harmed the Jewish community. “We, as the AMIA, work in order to guarantee the welfare of every single Jew living in Argentina,” he said. “Now this program showed an Israeli intelligence agent working for a hedge fund [owned by a Jew], who is willing to provide sensitive information about a terror attack only [to extort] the president! This has every single ingredient that anti-Semites love.”

For her part, Dayan said she is satisfied that the report contributed to progress on the AMIA case.

“We helped by showing a piece of the puzzle that was missing,” she told Mishpacha. “No one knew that there was a connection between Shaya and Nisman, and we showed that they met. I don’t know what will happen at this point, but my duty is to let people know. After that… it’s all in Hashem’s Hands.”