Latin America News – Iran Terrorists are “infiltrating” South America and setting up intelligence networks to carry out terrorist attacks in the region, an Argentine prosecutor said last week.
The prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, accused Mohsen Rabbani, Iran’s former cultural attaché in Buenos Aires and a suspect in the attack that killed 85 people, of working continually over the last two decades to develop an intelligence network in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Surinam and Trinidad and Tobago.
“These are sleeper cells. They have activities you wouldn’t imagine. Sometimes they die having never received the order to attack,” Nisman said as he presented a 500-page indictment.
He said Iran has sought “to infiltrate the countries of Latin America and install secret intelligence stations with the goal of committing, fomenting and fostering acts of international terrorism in concert with its goals of exporting the revolution.”
Iran no longer has an ambassador in Argentina.
Nisman’s concerns about Iran’s interest in South America are seen as a viable threat from the U.S. State Department and President Barack Obama.
Obama signed the “Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act” into law last year in an effort to assess Iranian-related threats in Central and South America.
Iran has established six embassies in Latin America since 2005, bringing the total to 11, and has built 17 cultural centers in the Western Hemisphere.
Nisman has tried for years in vain to get Rabbani and the other suspects extradited to face trial in Argentina. Iran denies any involvement in Argentina’s worst terrorist attack.
Based on reporting by Associated Press.
Category: Latin America News, Brazil
The Costa Rica News (TCRN)
San Jose Costa Rica
