Prosecutor requests arrest of former Argentine president Menem (Bush family friend)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Prosecutor requests arrest of former Argentine president Menem
Thu, 22 May 2008 17:57:00 GMT
DPA

Buenos Aires - A federal public prosecutor on Thursday requested the arrest of former Argentine president Carlos Menem (1989-1999) over "irregularities in the investigation" of an attack on a Jewish mutual fund that claimed the lives of 85 people in 1994, Argentine media reported. Public prosecutor Alberto Nisman also requested the arrests of Menem's brother Munir Menem, former intelligence service boss Hugo Anzorreguy and former federal judge Juan Galeano, initially in charge of the investigation on the attack. Federal judge Ariel Lijo will now have to make a decision also on those requests.

Judge Lijo is currently in charge of the case around the attack on the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) on July 18, 1994, which left 85 people dead and over 200 injured in central Buenos Aires.

One of the allegations that implicates former president Menem and his brother is that they intervened to keep Kannore Edul, an alleged participant in the so-called "Argentine connection" in the case, off the investigation regarding the attack.

Argentine legislation sets 1 to 6-year jail sentences for those found guilty of obstructing an investigation.

Read more: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/207348,prosecutor-requests-arrest-of-former-argentine-president-menem.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Earlier story: Bush Friend Arrested for Illegal Arms Trafficking

Bush Friend Arrested for Illegal Arms Trafficking
by Ana Simo

JUNE 7, 2001. A long-time friend of former U.S. President George H. Bush was arrested today on charges of illegal arms trafficking. If found guilty, he could face a jail term of up to ten years. Only a phone call from the new Bush White House might spare him the indignity, he thinks. But the phones aren't ringing.

The friend in trouble is the former President of Argentina, Carlos Menem, a golfing partner and business benefactor of the elder Bush. He is suspected of having illegally sold 6,500 tons of arms to Croatia and Ecuador between 1991 and 1995, in violation of international arms embargoes. Menem, who was put under house arrest today by a Buenos Aires federal judge, said in his defense last weekend that the U.S. knew all about the arms sales.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher gave Menem the cold shoulder on Monday. He was unaware, he said, of any action by the U.S. government entailing approval or encouragement of Argentinean arms sales to Croatia. Given how profitable the Menem connection has been for the Bushes, one might imagine Boucher was frostily putting interests of state ahead of the Bush family, until you realize that, with a Bush in the White House, they are essentially one and the same.

In 1988, a few months before Menem was elected for his first term, George W. Bush, the then oilman son of a sitting U.S. President, had tried to pressure the administration of outgoing President Raúl Alfonsín to favor Enron, the Houston-based company, over other, more qualified bidders to build a gas pipeline in Argentina. He was unsuccessful, but the Bushes hit it off with the high-rolling, big-spending Menem from the start. One of Menem's first acts as President was to give Enron a $300-million sweetheart deal on the pipeline project

More:
http://www.thegully.com/essays/argentina/010607bush_menem.html

[UpInArms]

8. history lesson: Gov Bush

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/03/argentina.html

Bush first made his presence felt in Argentina in 1988, shortly after his father was elected president. At the time, the junior Bush's political career was just beginning -- and the political career of Raúl Alfonsín, who was approaching the end of his term as president of Argentina, was ending. Alfonsín had returned his country to civilian rule, prosecuted those responsible for human rights abuses during Argentina's rule by a military junta, and struggled to manage an economy that seemed to defy management. Determined to complete one major private-sector industrial program, he pushed for the development of a "gasoducto" that would connect Argentine gas fields with domestic and foreign markets. And he appointed his minister of public works, Rodolfo Terragno, to oversee the pipeline project.

Unlike Bush, Terragno achieved political prominence the old-fashioned way: through a life dedicated to public service. A noted journalist and public official, he was forced into exile for 10 years after the military seized power in Argentina in 1976. Only after Alfonsín restored civilian rule did Terragno return to his homeland, where he went on to serve as minister of public works, a member of congress, and most recently as cabinet chief to the newly elected president, Fernando de la Rua.

In 1988, Terragno was considering two proposals for the $300-million pipeline, one from an Italian firm called Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi and the other from Pérez Companc, an Argentine company working in partnership with Dow Chemical. After a year of consideration, the minister was close to making a decision when Enron, the largest pipeline company in the United States, suddenly entered the bidding.

At the time, the Houston-based Enron had no experience in Argentina. It had formed a business relationship with Westfield, a small Argentine firm, but Westfield wasn't much of a player either. El Boletín Oficial -- the Argentine equivalent of the Federal Register -- reported that Westfield's only asset in 1988 was $20, its corporate filing fee. Westfield was a prestanombre, literally a "borrowed name" used to provide a domestic front for a foreign firm.

Terragno was concerned that a newly formed corporation with no resources was attempting to land a contract that companies with proven track records had been working on for a year. "I had a lot of reservations about Enron because the company wasn't well established in Argentina," Terragno told Mother Jones, providing details of the episode for the first time.

The minister recalls that Enron sent him "a one-page outline" proposing a price Terragno now describes as "laughable." Enron wanted to pay "something like 20 percent of the international market price," he says. "It all seemed so inadequate. Enron asked the country of Argentina to practically give them the gas."

Terragno was unenthusiastic about the pipeline bid, but Enron initiated a full-scale campaign to pressure him. Pro-business newspapers attacked the minister for blocking the proposal, and Terragno recalls that Ted Gildred, the U.S. ambassador to Argentina, "called me and visited me constantly" to push the deal.

Terragno wasn't concerned about the ambassador's lobbying -- that was politics as usual. "It was good that he was representing the interest of his country's businesses," he says. But Terragno found that some of the politics surrounding Enron's campaign were anything but usual.

A few weeks after the U.S. presidential election in 1988, Terragno received a phone call from a failed Texas oilman named George W. Bush, who happened to be the son of the president-elect. "He told me he had recently returned from a campaign tour with his father," the Argentine minister recalls. The purpose of the call was clear: to push Terragno to accept the bid from Enron.

"He was taking a moment to call me because he knew that I was dealing with this," says Terragno, adding that Bush told him that he "viewed with some concern the slow pace of the Enron project." According to Terragno, the president-elect's son noted that a deal with Enron "would be very favorable for Argentina and its relations with the United States."

[L. Coyote]

2. George Bush Sr. May Face Charges: Conspiring to Kidnap and Murder Political Activists

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2459135

[Judi Lynn]

6. That's an excellent collection of information. Should be bookmarked. n/t

[Judi Lynn]

3. Argentine prosecutor: Arrest Menem for obstructing Jewish center bomb probe

Argentine prosecutor: Arrest Menem for obstructing Jewish center bomb probe

By Reuters

Tags: AMIA, Argentina, Carlos Menem

An Argentine prosecutor is seeking an arrest order for ex-President Carlos Menem, saying he obstructed the initial investigation of the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

Prosecutor Alberto Nisman also asked Judge Ariel Lijo for arrest warrants for five officials who worked during Menem's two terms, from 1989 to 1999, and asked courts to remove Menem's immunity from prosecution, which he has as a senator.

"We have determined the existence of a plan that was put together at the highest political level in the 1990s ... to cover-up and give to one of the people who appeared as a main suspect in the local connection," Nisman told local television.
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The local connection refers to people living in Argentina who were involved with the attack, in which a truck bomb leveled the seven-story Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) building, a symbol of Latin America's largest Jewish community.

Nisman, who is in charge of a special unit dedicated exclusively to the AMIA investigation, said the cover-up plan included suspending searches and a sudden end to any activity on the case. Although the investigation in the 1990s did identify suspects, none were ever tried.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/986241.html

[Indenturedebtor]

4. Wow the Bushes associate with Nazis? You dont say... n/t

[zonmoy]

5. Either the guy he is going after is the designated fall guy

or the prosecutor is going to get the business end of a cia assassins gun.

[Judi Lynn]

7. AP: Argentine prosecutor seeks ex-president's arrest in alleged Jewish center bombing cover up

Argentine prosecutor seeks ex-president's arrest in alleged Jewish center bombing cover up
By Oscar Serrat
ASSOCIATED PRESS

12:54 p.m. May 22, 2008

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina – A prosecutor sought the arrest of former President Carlos Menem on Thursday, accusing him of covering up the involvement of a Syrian-Argentine businessman in the bombing of a Jewish community center that killed 85 people.

Prosecutor Alberto Nisman also requested the arrests of five others, including Menem's brother, Munir. He asked the Senate to withdraw Menem's immunity from prosecution as a member of that chamber.

In his petition to Judge Ariel Lijo, the prosecutor claimed that Menem, now 77, and his aides tried to cover up the possible involvement of Alberto Jacinto Kanoore Edul in the 1994 car-bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association, the country's bloodiest terrorist attack.

Eighty-five people were killed and 200 were injured when a bomb exploded in a van outside the seven-story center in Buenos Aires, symbol of a Jewish population that numbers more than 200,000. The explosion came two years after a bomb flattened the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people.

More:
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20080522-1254-argentina-menem.html