Buenos Aires, Argentina declared the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas as an “international terrorist organization” for the assault committed on October 7 in Israelin addition to an “extensive history of attacks,” the presidency announced.
“The Hamas group has been declared by the Argentine State as an international terrorist organization,” the office of President Javier Milei said in a statement.
The Argentine presidency argued that “HAMAS has claimed responsibility for the atrocities committed during the attack on Israel on October 7,” in which 1,195 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 251 were kidnapped by Palestinian militants, according to a media count based on official Israeli data.
The European Union and the United States also consider Hamas a terrorist organization.
“These attacks add to a long history of terrorist attacks in his name,” the statement added, emphasizing that “President Javier Milei has an unwavering commitment to recognize terrorists for what they are.”
Milei declares himself a fervent admirer of the Hebrew state. In February he travelled to Israel, where he visited one of the kibbutzim attacked by Hamas on 7 October and said that Israel has the right to defend itself from “21st century Nazism”.
In Israel, Milei also announced his intention to move the Argentine embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and was seen praying emotionally at the Wailing Wall, the holiest place in Judaism.
In its statement, the Argentine presidency also attacked Hamas’s “link” with Iran.
“Outrage”
In April, the South American country’s courts ruled that the attacks on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992, which left 29 dead, as well as the one on the AMIA health insurance company two years later, which left 85 dead, were ordered by Iran.
Argentina has therefore issued an international arrest warrant for Iranian Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi.
“These attacks cost the lives of more than 100 Argentine citizens,” the presidential statement said.
Source: With information from AFP
