Iran accused of Latin America terror plot

An Argentine prosecutor has accused Iran of establishing terrorist networks in Latin America dating back to the 1980s.

State prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who is investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people, accused Iran on Wednesday of "infiltrating" South America and setting up intelligence networks to carry out terrorist attacks in the region, BBC reported.

Nisman accused Mohsen Rabbani, Iran's former cultural attache in Buenos Aires and a suspect in the bombing, of working continually over the last two decades to develop an intelligence network in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

Nisman said the attack that destroyed the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association building was no isolated incident, but "part of a much larger plot, in which the role of Rabbani was not limited to Argentina but extended as far as Guyana, as well as being responsible for coordinating these activities across all of South America."

"These are sleeper cells. They have activities you wouldn't imagine. Sometimes they die having never received the order to attack," Nisman said as he presented a 500-page indictment.

He said Iran has sought "to infiltrate the countries of Latin America and install secret intelligence stations with the goal of committing, fomenting and fostering acts of international terrorism in concert with its goals of exporting the revolution."