Protestors in Buenos Aires demonstrate against the Kirchner government’s pact with Iran in February 2013. Photo: Reuters/Marcos Brindicci.

The Jewish community in Argentina pledged to appeal the decision of a Buenos Aires judge on Thursday to dismiss the case against former President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner over an alleged cover-up of Iran’s role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more.

“We continue to demand justice and the bringing of the accused to trial,” Jorge Knoblovits — head of the Argentine umbrella Jewish organization DAIA — said on Friday.

Now serving as the Vice-President of Argentina in the government of President Alberto Fernandez, her former chief of staff, the outlook for Kirchner was not so positive only three years ago. In March 2018, a federal judge ruled that Kirchner, ex-foreign minister Hector Timerman, and ten other close aides would face trial over a 2013 pact with Iran that whitewashed Tehran’s responsibility for the AMIA bombing — one of the worst acts of antisemitic violence since World War II.

The pact between Argentina and Iran exonerating the Tehran regime of responsibility for the AMIA atrocity was exposed by Alberto Nisman, the AMIA investigation federal prosecutor found murdered in his Buenos Aires apartment in January 2015 — an assassination that Kirchner falsely depicted as a suicide at the time. As Nisman had been about to file a formal complaint against the Kirchner government over the Iran pact, speculation had remained as to whether the former President or her advisors may have been implicated in his killing.

Knoblovits underlined that DAIA would appeal the decision in favor of Kirchner.

Several opposition politicians also condemned the court decision. One lawmaker, Margarita Stolbizer, argued that a trial “would clarify the reasons for the pact that exonerated the Iranians accused of the AMIA attack from appearing before Argentine justice, to determine whether or not a crime was committed.”