Argentine authorities announced on Wednesday that they had arrested three men, including a Syrian national, in Buenos Aires and surrounding areas on suspicion of being members of a terrorist organization.
Security Minister Patricia Bullrich did not reveal the identities of the men detained over the weekend, but released an image of the suspects with their faces blurred.
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The ministry said in a statement hours earlier that one of those arrested was a Syrian national who had a passport with his Venezuelan and Colombian names on it. The nationalities of the other two men were not disclosed, but Bullrich said the men had previously used documents of different nationalities.
“We don't know if their names are real or not,” Bullrich told reporters.
Patricia Bulllich, currently Argentina's Minister of Security, speaks at the closing campaign rally for the August 13 primary elections in Buenos Aires, August 7, 2023. (Photo by JUAN MABROMATA/AFP via Getty Images)
Bullrich said authorities were on high alert because Buenos Aires was hosting the Pan American Maccabi Games, which attracted thousands of Jewish athletes from around the world, and the Israeli-Hamas war was escalating in the Gaza Strip. Stated.
Bullrich said the three arrived in Argentina on separate flights and booked a hotel “two blocks from the Israeli embassy.” He added that the suspects were waiting for “a package coming from Yemen,” raising authorities' suspicions.
Argentina was the site of one of the largest attacks on Jewish communities in Latin America. In 1992, a bomb exploded at the Israeli embassy, killing 29 people.
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Two years later, a car bomb destroyed a Jewish cultural center and killed 85 people in the capital. Prosecutors claimed Iranian operatives were behind the attack, a claim Iran denied.
