Hezbollah Read online

  El-Reda’s brother married Sain’s sister and they, too, were close followers of Rabbani. The sisters, described by authorities as “zealot Islamist militants,” were both active members of the al-Tauhid mosque, where they worked with Rabbani.89 During this period el-Reda apparently returned to Lebanon at least once, where he spent time as a Hezbollah fighter in the south.90

  In Buenos Aires el-Reda’s friendships with the likes of Mohsen Rabbani and Mohammed Reza Javadi-Nia help explain investigators’ finding that he was involved with the “most radical core” elements within the local Muslim community in Buenos Aires.91 According to investigators, telephone calls like the one placed from el-Reda’s home in Foz to the al-Tauhid mosque on May 26, 1994, underscore el-Reda’s ties to Rabbani in the period leading up to the AMIA attack. For his part, both before and after the AMIA bombing, Rabbani was in regular contact with a wide array of Hezbollah-related personalities, including Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah’s secretary in Beirut, according to a call on April 3, 1992. On August 2, 1994, just a couple of weeks after the bombing, Rabbani met with a Brazilian national and suspected Hezbollah operative named Ghazi Iskhandar. Iskhandar was presumably from the tri-border area, and his name was found in the appointment calendar of Bassem Harakeh, described by authorities as a “Hezbollah terrorist” who was at the time under detention in Norway.92

  Plotting the AMIA Bombing

  Hezbollah would later link the AMIA bombing to the capture of Hezbollah militant Mustafa Dirani by Israeli commandos. But in May 1993—a full year prior to Dirani’s capture by Israeli commandos—and again in November 1993, Rabbani visited car dealerships to inquire about purchasing a Renault Trafic van, according to Argentine intelligence. No purchase was made at the time, though authorities grew suspicious when they learned that Rabbani gave each car salesperson a different story explaining his interest in the purchase. Then, in a television interview following the AMIA bombing, Rabbani would deny having inquired about buying a van at all, insisting he was looking for a sedan all along despite the detailed testimonies of several salespersons at multiple dealerships.93

  Further investigation would reveal a much earlier start date for Rabbani’s field-work in support of the AMIA bombing. From the time he first arrived in the country in 1983, investigators found, Rabbani recruited local Shi’a scouts to assess potential Jewish and American targets in the city, providing the basis for surveillance and targeting reports that Rabbani drafted and passed along to senior intelligence officials back in Iran. According to prosecutors, Rabbani’s surveillance reports would later prove to be “a determining factor in making the decision to carry out the AMIA attack.”94

  With Rabbani’s reports in hand, senior Iranian officials meeting in Mashhad, in northwest Iran, would select the AMIA building from a list of potential targets on August 14, 1993.95 The testimony corroborating the occurrence of this meeting by intelligence defector Abolghasem Mesbahi, prosecutors noted, was particularly useful “by virtue of his having worked for [Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, MOIS], his participation in operations similar in nature to the AMIA bombing, and his close relationship with the then–second in command of [MOIS], Said Eslami.”96 Around the time of this August meeting, intelligence reports indicated Hezbollah was “planning some sort of spectacular act against Western interests, probably Israeli but perhaps against the United States.”97

  A subgroup of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, the Committee for Special Operations, made the final decision to approve the attack. That meeting reportedly included Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, President Rafsanjani, Minister of Intelligence Ali Fallahian, and Foreign Minister Ali Velayati. Also present, all the way from Argentina, were Mohsen Rabbani and Ahmad Asghari, the latter a suspected IRGC official stationed at the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires under diplomatic cover whose real name, according to Abolghasem Mesbahi, was Mohsen Randjbaran. Based on their firsthand knowledge and experience, Rabbani and Asghari were present to advise the committee about the target selection, their logistical and intelligence support networks, and the political and security environment in Argentina.98

  According to Argentine intelligence, once the committee reached its decision, Supreme Leader Khamenei issued a religious edict—a fatwa—sanctifying the operation as a sacred duty aimed at exporting the revolution. Intelligence chief Ali Fallahian was then given overall operational responsibility for the attack, and Qods Force commander Ahmad Vahidi was instructed to provide any necessary assistance. Under Fallahian, three critical assignments were made, according to Argentine intelligence. First, “Fallahian instructed [Hezbollah’s] Imad Mughniyeh to form an operational group, which then took charge of executing the attack.”99 Next, Rabbani was put in charge of local logistics for the attack, including all details pertaining to the purchase, hiding, and arming of the van to be used in the bombing, and liaising with the Hezbollah operatives on the ground in Argentina. Finally, Asghari was placed in charge of activating Iran’s “clandestine networks” in support of the operation.100

  Rabbani helped by activating his own local networks too. Argentine intelligence confirmed that Rabbani left for Iran on June 18, 1993, and returned four months later on October 29. He returned to Iran in late February 1994, presumably to receive his diplomatic credentials. The decision to accredit Rabbani as a diplomat just months before the AMIA bombing enabled him “to go about providing material support for the operation with relative ease, while at the same time guaranteeing him diplomatic immunity following the attack.”101

  In time investigators would uncover records of phone calls between the Iranian embassy in Buenos Aires—where Asghari and now Rabbani were both employed—and suspected Hezbollah operatives in the tri-border area operating out of a mosque and a travel agency.102 Even the trained Hezbollah operatives who would soon follow Rabbani and Asghari back to Argentina to carry out the actual attack are presumed to have been directly tied to Iran. According to expert opinions provided in the AMIA investigation, Hezbollah prefers outside operatives to local contacts when running its major operations in other countries. These operatives generally are more trustworthy and better trained, more often than not in Iranian terrorist training camps.103

  Intelligence and Logistics Support for the AMIA Bombing

  Within weeks after the meeting in Mashhad at which Iranian officials approved the AMIA bombing based on Rabbani and Asghari’s briefings, Iranian diplomats started requesting diplomatic visas for visits to Argentina. Visas were requested in October 1993 for Ministry of Islamic Culture and Guidance (Ershad) undersecretary Ali Janati and Ahmad Alamolhoda, the director of the Cultural Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Coming on the heels of Rabbani’s appointment as cultural attaché, these officials’ proposed six-day visit raised concerns among investigators—not least because of Janati’s seniority and witness descriptions of his brother as a Revolutionary Guard official and “a well-known terrorist and member of the hard line faction.”104 For reasons unknown, this trip never happened. Nearly simultaneous visa requests would later be submitted for Alamolhoda at the Argentine embassies in The Hague and Berlin on June 7 and 8, 1994. Alamolhoda arrived in Argentina within days, and despite specifically requesting a thirty-day visa, he departed just four days later for Madrid, site of the MOIS regional office that oversees activities in Latin America.105

  Next, on June 18, Ahmad Abousaeidi, the first secretary at the Iranian embassy in Uruguay, arrived in Argentina on a ninety-day visa.106 At least six other Iranian officials traveled to Buenos Aires for short visits in June 1994, including Iranian ambassador to Uruguay and suspected MOIS operative Mohammad Ali Sarmadi-Rad, who had made a similarly suspicious trip to Argentina in the lead-up to the 1992 embassy bombing.107 Another group of Iranian diplomats entered Argentina the weekend prior to the AMIA bombing and left just two days later.108 Looking back on the bombing, investigators highlighted a variety of suspicious behaviors related to this group. Several group members reportedly traveled on
fictitious names. Masoud Amiri, an attaché in the Iranian embassy in Brasília, provided the Sheraton Hotel as his local address on his immigration form on arrival in Argentina, but the hotel had no record of anyone by that name ever staying there.109

  Argentine authorities would also note in hindsight that many of the passports used by the various Iranian government officials who arrived in Argentina in June and July of 1994 were brand-new, issued in April and May, just ahead of this travel. Many of these officials had existing passports in good standing, suggesting they specifically sought new passports for this trip. In several cases, investigators later determined, the officials’ new passports featured sequential or nearly sequential numbers.110 These findings confirmed for prosecutors that the “new diplomatic cover was granted” expressly to create confusion “concerning the identity of these envoys.”111

  As for the funding of the AMIA bombing, much appears to have flowed through bank accounts controlled by Rabbani. In December 1993, two months after he returned from the go-ahead meeting in Mashhad, Rabbani opened an account at a local branch of Deutsche Bank. He already had two active bank accounts, one opened at Banco Sudameris in April 1989 and another at Banco Tornquist opened in March 1992, but the new account was to serve a very specific purpose. Just four months before the AMIA bombing, a total of $150,812 was deposited in Rabbani’s new bank account. Rabbani withdrew a total of $94,000 from this account in the period leading up to the July 18 bombing, and another $45,588 was withdrawn within two months following the attack. These funds arrived through international bank transfers, at least three of which were sent from Iran’s Bank Melli through Unión de Bancos Suizos.112 Only later, in October 2007, would the US government reveal that Bank Melli was an established financial conduit through which Iran purchased sensitive materials for its nuclear and missile programs and moved money for the IRGC and Qods Force.113

  Rabbani apparently received funds from Iran in his Banco Tornquist account as well. According to Argentina’s federal tax office, there is no evidence that funds deposited into that account originated in Argentina. Prosecutors believe that “Rabbani used the funds from the aforementioned account to defray various expenses related to the execution of the AMIA attack.”114 Over the course of 1994—both before and after the attack—Rabbani withdrew a total of $284,388 from his accounts, underscoring Mesbahi’s testimony that “Rabbani was the main person in charge of the local logistics for the operation.”115

  Alongside Iran’s use of diplomatic cover to build an intelligence network in Argentina, Tehran likewise provided cover stories and day jobs to Hezbollah operatives. A close contact of Imad Mughniyeh’s, the New Yorker reported, “is a sheikh named Bilal Mohsen Wehbi, a Lebanese who was trained in Iran, and who reports to the Iranian Cultural Affairs Ministry.”116 This ministry, along with the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and the Foreign Ministry, effectively embedded agents abroad to support Hezbollah plots. At the Foreign Ministry, for example, the director for Arab affairs, Hossein Sheikh al-Islam, coordinated with the IRGC “to place its members in Iranian embassies abroad and participate in Hezbollah operations,” according to Hezbollah expert Magnus Ranstorp.117 Members of the IRGC’s Qods Force also played key support roles in the AMIA attack, according to a Defense Department report on Iran’s military power.118

  In addition to dispatching intelligence officers under diplomatic cover, Iran’s intelligence services ran operatives under nonofficial cover. The lack of diplomatic cover made for a riskier proposition—but in other ways a more effective one, given such operatives’ freedom from the embassy walls and bureaucracy. Take, for example, Hossein Parsa, who replaced the IRGC intelligence agent Seyed Jamal Youssefi at the Iranian government–owned Government Trade Corporation (GTC). GTC “had two missions,” according Abolghasem Mesbahi, the Iranian intelligence official who defected: “generating income; and manipulating sources and providing them with ample cover.” Whereas Youssefi’s activities focused on intelligence collection and other preoperational activities, Parsa positioned himself in the right place at the right time to provide logistical support for the AMIA attack. Three months before the AMIA bombing, Parsa rented an apartment that was notable principally because its rear windows were completely obscured by a massive billboard. The contract for the apartment was signed at the Iranian embassy in April 1994, with embassy personnel serving as the official witnesses. From the outside, no one could see what was going on in the apartment. But telephone records would reveal that calls were placed from this apartment to the Ministry of Reconstruction in Iran, including one the day before the AMIA attack.119

  Two days before the attack, as the explosives-filled van was being parked in a garage near the AMIA center, Mohsen Rabbani placed calls to GTC from his cell phone. Cell tower logs confirm Rabbani was in the vicinity of the parking garage and the AMIA at the time. This drew the attention of investigators, not only because GTC was believed to be a front for Iranian intelligence but also because the Ministry for Reconstruction “was used as a cover for activities by Quds Force representatives.”120

  Did Hossein Parsa’s apartment function as an operational safe house for the AMIA plotters? Investigators simply say that “further work remains to be done” in terms of investigating Parsa’s activities. Prosecutors took note, however, of testimony stressing that “the first priority in selecting a safe house is security, and the second is distance.” Prosecutors noted further the importance safe houses played in the botched Hezbollah bombing in Bangkok earlier that year and in other cases, such as in Croatia, where police raids of Hezbollah safe houses turned up arms and explosives.121

  Whatever the function of Parsa’s apartment for this network, Argentine intelligence took note when, two months after the AMIA bombing, he abruptly left Argentina with a year and a half remaining on his rental agreement.122 The Iranian embassy also withdrew Khalil Mashoun, the commercial representative of GTC, that same month.123 Authorities suspected GTC of functioning as an intelligence front even after the AMIA attack. While the company failed to submit tax filings most years, it reported no commercial activity at all in its filing for the period of January–September 1995. Authorities believe GTC conducted no business of any kind over this nine-month period because it was primarily a front for Iranian intelligence that benefited from a permanent Iranian government subsidy, not a commercial enterprise.124 Interviewing witnesses and investigating GTC and other companies, investigators found that Mohsen Rabbani maintained such close ties with Iranian front companies that he often determined whom they employed. In one intercepted telephone call, the head of one suspected front company, South Beef, was overheard explaining that “Rabbani was the one who provided all the personnel for the companies” and therefore hiring new employees was not up to him.125

  While Rabbani attended to the necessary logistical details in Buenos Aires, Hezbollah operatives in the tri-border area planned the operation itself. These two groups stayed in close touch as the plot slowly came together. On only two occasions, tri-border plotters called Rabbani at home, reflecting either sloppy tradecraft or perhaps an especially pressing operational need. One of those calls, placed from Farouk Omairi’s Piloto Turismo travel agency, was immediately preceded by a succession of brief calls to other numbers, which the FBI determined “could demonstrate a possible pattern of calls of coordination in preparation for the call to Rabbani’s residence.”126

  Shuttling between safe houses in Buenos Aires, where he was then living, and a red brick house in Foz, Samuel el-Reda coordinated the Hezbollah operation in the weeks leading up to the attack.127 He coordinated the arrival of the Hezbollah operational squad in the country some seventeen days before the attack, saw to the logistics of their stay in Buenos Aires, and oversaw the departure of the Hezbollah strike force on a flight to the tri-border region some two hours prior to the attack. El-Reda, as the primary local logistician for the attack, kept the chief operational coordinators based in the tri-border area apprised of the Hezbollah cell’s progress
throughout the attack’s final phases.128 It would take years, but in June 2009, prosecutors would issue a warrant for el-Reda’s arrest on charges of being a central coordinator for the AMIA bombing operation.129

  Several tri-border-based Hezbollah operatives played central roles in the AMIA bombing, but the actual coordinator may have been Imad Mughniyeh himself.130 Following the Mashhad meeting, according to Argentine intelligence, Mughniyeh acted on Iran’s orders to assemble the operational group that carried out the attack.131 According to Israeli intelligence, Mughniyeh oversaw the operation and provided the explosives used in the attack.132

  Mesbahi’s testimony, meanwhile, indicated that the person chosen by Intelligence Chief Fallahian to head the operation (whether Mughniyeh or not) went by the cover name “Ahad.” To oversee the attack, Ahad traveled to Argentina some five or six days before the bombing on an authentic Greek passport refitted with a false name. He left the country on that same passport two or three days after the attack. Mesbahi further explained, “[Ahad] can be found in the area of Baalbek, Lebanon, Iman Hossein headquarters, where he is now the Commander in Chief of the Hezbollah’s Army.” Based on Mesbahi’s description, Argentine authorities made a police sketch of Ahad that was circulated to several other countries as well as Interpol and provided to the media in an effort to identify him. That effort proved fruitless, an unsurprising result given the dearth of public pictures of Mughniyeh.133 Ahad has never been proved to be Mughniyeh, despite strong suspicions to this effect; even Mesbahi could not state the tie definitively. But whether he was there in person or oversaw the operation from abroad, investigators believe Mughniyeh masterminded the AMIA bombing. “Mughniyeh would be the ultimate [suspect],” AMIA prosecutor Nisman would admit in 2002, “that is our target.”134 The following year, prosecutors would issue arrest warrants for both Imad Mughniyeh and Assad Barakat.135