On Monday, Argentina's President Mauricio Macri and senior members of his Cabinet, including Vice-President Gabriela Michetti, were present for the commemoration of the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires.
It was the first time in five years that an Argentine head of state attended the ceremony outside the country's main Jewish center, which was hit by a car bomb on 18 July 1994 that killed 85 people and wounded hundreds.
Instead of placing flowers at the memorial in the courtyard of the AMIA/DAIA building, as was initially envisaged, Macri chose to participate in the traditional ceremony outside the Jewish center, which is located in downtown Buenos Aires. However, the Argentine president left before the beginning of the speeches.
'Memory unites us' was the motto of this year's ceremony, which again included the reading of the names of the 85 people who were killed in the attack. Argentine prosecutors believe Iran masterminded the terrorist attack, the worst in the history of Argentina.
At 9:53 a.m. local time, the moment when 22 years ago the car bomb exploded outside the AMIA/DAIA building, sirens wailed. AMIA Vice President Ralph Thomas Saieg said: "There is an obligation to tell what happened."
He went on to state: "The terrorists who planted the bomb did not ask which political party they would hot, but they simply wanted to destroy the symbol for solidarity that is the AMIA and thus hurt us all as Argentineans."
Saieg called on the country's justice minister, Germán Garavano, to make progress with the investigation.
Survivors also criticized previous governments for not solving the crime. "The justice they deserved is as dead as them," Sofia de Guterman said about her daughter, Andrea Guterman, and other victims during the ceremony held at the reconstructed building. If those responsible don't face justice, "we'll soon have to issue a death certificate for the case itself," Guterman said.
Prosecutors have accused Iranian officials of being behind the bombing, but no one has been convicted in the attack, which many Argentines believe has come to symbolize an inept and corrupt justice system.
"It's been 22 years of not knowing what went on as a result of badly introduced evidence, other evidence that hasn't even been considered, and documents that the executive power hid from judges," Mario Cimadevilla, head of a special investigative unit focused on the attack, told Argentine radio.
