Interpol boosts its hunt for bombers

INTERPOL put five Iranians and a Lebanese man on its most-wanted list yesterday in connection with a 1994 bombing that killed 85 people at a Jewish community centre in Argentina.

Iranian delegates said the annual Interpol general assembly in Morocco voted 78-14, with 26 abstentions, to issue wanted notices for the six suspects.

“We have achieved something that we have been hoping for, for a long time,” said Alberto Nisman, the chief Argentine prosecutor in the case.

Argentine prosecutors alleged that Iranian officials orchestrated the bombing in Buenos Aires — Argentina’s worst terror attack — and entrusted the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah with carrying it out.

No one has been convicted in Argentina in connection with the blast, in which a van stuffed with explosives levelled the seven-storey Jewish centre and shook Argentina’s 200,000-strong Jewish community.

Nisman rejected Iranian claims that the vote was political, saying: “This is a police matter.”