Twenty-eight plaques and photographs of several graves have been stolen from the Jewish cemetery La Tablada in Buenos Aires, Argentina. "We are investigating the theft of plaques and photo frames of several graves, some of which belonged to victims of the 1994 AMIA attack," Aldo Donzis, President of the Delegation of Argentine Jewish Associations (DAIA), told the Jewish news agency AJN. Olga Degtiar, mother of a victim in the 1994 terrorist attack whose grave was desecrated, said that "on Sunday morning everything was fine, and in the afternoon the plaques were stolen." She stressed that this was not the first time the cemetery had been desecrated - monuments have been destroyed on previous occasions.
The incident occurred less than two weeks before the 14th anniversary of the AMIA bombing. Sergio Burstein, member of the association Relatives and Friends of the Victims of the AMIA Attack, stressed that community leaders are doing "what needs to be done" to solve this issue. Last September, the Ministry of Security, together with AMIA, launched a security device to prevent acts of vandalism, desecration, and other offenses. This is a multi-monitoring security system, unique in Argentina and one of the few existing in the world. The system also includes alarms, sirens and movement sensors. La Tablada cemetery, located in La Matanza district, is the biggest Jewish graveyard in Latin America.
