Investigations Unit of the Office of the Attorney General Marcelo Martinez Burgos Alberto Nisman District attorney Attorney general Office of criminal investigations AMIA CASE 0 REPORT; REQUEST FOR ARRESTS Your Honor: ALBERTO NISMAN and MARCELO MARTÍNEZ BURGOS, district attorneys in charge of the Unidad Fiscal de Investigación del atentado a la AMIA [District attorney’s unit in charge of the investigation of the AMIA attack] in case no. 8566 of the register of Juzgado Nacional en lo Criminal and Correccional Federal n° 6 of Buenos Aires, Secretaría 11 - Anexo |AMIA. Case name: "Coppe, Juan Carlos y otros s/asociación ilícita, homicidio, lesiones, daños y otros". The investigation involves the attack against AMIA on 18 July 1994, in regard to which we hereby present the following report: I. INTRODUCTION a) Subject matter and relevance of the report Pursuant to the decree (p. 115.336/115.3411) 1 issued 8 February 2005, the judge in the case His Honor Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, assigned to the present authors the case mentioned above. The assignment was to investigate the 18 July 1994 bombing of the building at calle Pasteur n° 633 in Buenos Aires. This building housed the offices of, among other organizations, the Asociación 1 In the present report, unless otherwise indicated, page references (p.) indicate material from the main body of the proceedings. 1 Mutual Israelita Argentina (hereinafter referred to as AMIA) and the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas (hereinafter referred to as DALA). The attack caused the death of 85 persons, injuries of varying severity to at least 151 persons, and substantial damage. In the interest of providing an approximate idea of the scope and progress of the case as at the date of submission of the present report by order of the Court, we would like to point out that insofar as the main body of the proceedings is concerned, the investigation generated 113,600 pages of documentation distributed in 568 files containing 200 pages of documents each, in addition to 499 investigation files in various stages of completion concerning other areas of the inquiry that emerged during the investigation, and a large amount of attached documentation that has been incorporated into the case over the years and that includes items such as approximately 1000 packages containing seven or eight files each comprising transcriptions of phone calls, and approximately 1500 folders containing information gathered by the then Federal Secretariat of Intelligence (now the Secretariat of Intelligence of the Executive Branch), which by order of the president of Argentina, were declassified and made available to the present authors. Hence the initial phases of our activities involved not only classifying this mountain of material adequately, but also systematically familiarizing ourselves with all of the information contained therein, insofar as possible, including the files that were archived at the time we were assigned the task of compiling the present report. This was done because we felt that there was no other way to obtain a reasonably precise picture of the current status of the case, and on this basis, define the way forward such that the investigation will be conducted in a serious manner. Needless to say, this task took a number of months, at the conclusion of which and in keeping with the plan that had originally been laid out, it was possible to purge the case of all lines of 2 investigation that were clearly dead-ends in terms of getting to the bottom of the events in question. This measure allowed for more efficient and productive use of the available resources, and has enabled us to focus on pursuing certain lines of investigation that had been cut short for one reason or another. Toward this end, particular emphasis was placed on the major issues that have arisen during the investigation of the attack, mainly in connection with the following: characterization of the vehicle chassis that originally accommodated the engine that was found in the wreckage of the AMIA building; obtaining information concerning the driver of the car bomb that was used for the attack and his connections with the so called Triple Border area; the provenance of the explosives; the possible financing channels for the attack, which would in turn enable us to identify the perpetrators of and participants in the attack, including identification of local residents that might have lent their support to the attack in one way or another. In view of the publicity that has surrounded the serious irregularities that were committed by judicial officials, politicians and private individuals in handling and dealing with this case, plus the unusually lengthy period of time that has elapsed since an attack which is particularly difficult to investigate (this is true of all terrorist attacks owing to the unusual modus operandi of their perpetrators), we do not feel that we need to say a great deal concerning the problems that have plagued and continue to plague the present investigation. However, despite the fact that the highest levels of the executive branch and the attorney general have spared no effort in providing us with the technical tools and human resources needed to undertake our task with all due professionalism, unfortunately there have been times when the classic investigatory methods were inadequate when it came to attempting to address the various issues in this investigation. 3 To take only one of many examples of this: recently the managers of a certain bank notified us that it was not possible to provide us with the documentation that we had requested owing to the fact that, as provided by law, such documentation is automatically and in every instance destroyed after a certain amount of time has elapsed – in this case ten years (p. 2.740/2.741, 2.744, 2.787 and 2.907/2.908 of Mohsen Rabbani’s assets file, case 1627). This type of problem has also arisen with greater frequency than is desirable in connection with phone call records, which are a source of information that is particularly sensitive in a case of this nature. The approach we have taken to this case since it was assigned to our unit necessitated an expansion of the databases that were originally required of the phone companies, which have had to repeatedly recover and reconstruct the relevant archives; a process that has involved contending with the understandable problems generated by the advances that have occurred in information technology over the more than 12 years since the information was originally generated. The main processes in this regard were plagued with a labor intensive series of comments, files, documents and new comments pertaining to these difficulties, as well as others of a strictly technical nature. Efforts were continously made to surmount these problems by our office as well as various other entities whose assistance was enlisted (see p. 115.948/115.950, 116.941/116.942, 118.835, 120.844 (and reverse), 120.851/120.965, 121.383/121.385). On the other hand, it is well known that at the time of the AMIA attack, the Argentine immigration control system suffered from serious deficiencies. This system was operated by the Dirección Nacional de Migraciones , although it should be said that this is yet another sensitive area in the 4 investigation of an act that was classified early on as an act of international terrorism. Until 1996, all immigration information was recorded manually on the basis of 210 separate work steps. In any case, and above and beyond the examples we have cited above, what we are trying to say here in black and white is that the investigation of the AMIA attack has been confronted with a large and burdensome series of problems, and that it is therefore only logical that these problems are not only reflected in the current investigation of the attack, but will continue to have an adverse effect on future investigations. The paradoxical and irritating fact that many of these problems are attributable to the irregularities committed by the officials that were supposed to be getting to the bottom of the case makes the current problematic situation all the more regrettable; although it must be said that acknowledging it will unfortunately do nothing to mitigate the aforementioned effects. Moreover, irrespective of the responsibility of any of the aforementioned officials for their actions in these matter, we feel strongly that an honest and straightforward acknowledgement of the actual status of the current situation is not only relevant to an assessment of the report we are submitting, but also represents the fulfillment of a moral obligation toward all those individuals who were directly affected by the attack and on whose behalf Argentine society is still seeking justice. As a counterweight to this acknowledgement of the problems with the investigation, it is only fair to also point out that our unit has carried out its work – and continues to carry it out – with the sole and unwavering aim of completely solving the case and surmounting the various problems it has presented us with on a daily basis. This has been exactly the mindset that has motivated us to pursue various lines of inquiry which, as previously stated, were at mid-course when we took over the investigation, and to reactivate other lines of inquiry that had been abandoned. It is perhaps 5 thanks to this approach that we are in a position to report that after more than 18 months of work, we have obtained highly positive results for many key aspects of the investigation. We would also like to point out in this regard the highly relevant fact that we have made clear progress in terms of obtaining information concerning the person that the Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado (Secretariat of Intelligence) 2 rightly indicated was the suspected suicide driver of the vehicle that was used as a car bomb.