Police in Argentina arrested seven people Saturday during raids against what they said was an Islamic terrorist organization planning an attack on Jewish targets, including synagogues.
Argentina’s Jewish political umbrella organization, DAIA, said the raids had followed its own complaint to Argentina’s Federal Police after a Jewish journalist in Mendoza faced a threat that it did not detail. The group said in a statement that the group had “spread anti-Christian and anti-Jewish language via Telegram and WhatsApp” and also suggested that the group had ties to ISIS and the Taliban.
Local news in the western Argentina province reported that the threats had been made on the journalist’s Facebook page in 2023 but did not name the journalist or specify the threats. According to the reports, the investigation was titled “Salafist Brothers,” a reference to the fundamentalist movement of Sunni Islam.
Patricia Bullrich, Argentina’s minister of security, tweeted footage from the raids, which were conducted at private homes, the Cristo Redentor Border Crossing that connects Argentina and Chile and at the International Airport of Ezeiza in Buenos Aires. The footage showed guns, knives and ammunition as well as Islamic literature and material.
“We are going to get rid of each and every one of these criminals who try to sow fear in Argentines and they will pay,” Bullrich tweeted.
The arrests come shortly after the 30th anniversary of the AMIA Jewish community center bombing in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 and was until Oct. 7 the deadliest single attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, has vowed to take decisive action against Iran, widely understood to have been behind the AMIA bombing, and its proxies.
Some 3,000 Jews live in Mendoza, a province of 1.9 million. Argentina overall has the largest Jewish population in Latin America, with an estimated 180,000. Despite alarm in the Jewish community after the arrests, communal activities went on without interruption this weekend.