The United States Department of Justice accused on Wednesday Samuel Salman El Reda,  a Colombian-Lebanese citizen and alleged member of the Islamist group Hezbollah, of participating in the planning of the July 18, 1994 attack on the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA). ) of Buenos Aires, which left 85 dead and hundreds injured.

Since at least 1983, he has led terrorist operations on behalf of Hezbollah's Islamic Jihad Organization (IJO) and, according to a press release released Wednesday by the US Department of Justice, recruited agents and deployed terrorist operations. the IJO in Panama, Thailand, and Peru.

“In or about February 2011, El Reda ordered an IJO agent to travel to Panama to monitor the Panama Canal and the US and Israeli embassies, and in or about January 2012, El Reda ordered an IJO agent who will travel again to Panama to carry out additional pre-operational surveillance,” the statement said.

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El Reda, 58, is a fugitive and presumably in Lebanon. The United States is offering a reward of up to $7 million for information on El Reda, also known by the names Salman Raouf Salman, Sulayman Rammal, Salman Ramal, and simply “Hajj.”

El Reda is charged in the Southern District Court of New York with four counts of conspiring to provide material support to Hezbollah and aiding and abetting military-type training for a terrorist organization. The indictment had remained sealed until now.

“This indictment is a message to those who engage in acts of terrorism: that the Department of Justice's memory is long and we will not rest in our efforts to bring them to justice,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Department of the Department of  Homeland Security.

“Prosecutors in this office have not forgotten the pain and suffering that El Reda has allegedly caused and we appreciate the dedication of our law enforcement partners in pursuing this important case,” added Damian Williams, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District. from New York.

Since 1997, the US State Department has designated Hezbollah as a foreign terrorist organization.

A report on the status of the investigation prepared by the Fiscal Unit for the Investigation of the Amia Cause (Argentine Israeli Mutual Association) of the Argentine Public Ministry, released in July 2022, mentions the attack on Alas Chiricanas flight 901, which exploded in the air, with 21 people on board, on July 19, 1994, while on the Colón-Panama City route.

“Both attacks, this one and the one directed against the AMIA, were claimed by the same organization through a statement published in Lebanon a few days later. In turn, the exchange of information that has been taking place with the Panamanian prosecutor's office following the attack determined the existence of telephone contacts in the days before the attacks, where the person who was known here in Argentina as Samuel also flew over El Reda”, highlights the report of the Fiscal Unit.

In Panama, last August, the Superior Discharge Prosecutor's Office submitted a request for an extension to the Superior Liquidation Court in the investigation carried out by that office for the death of the 21 people who were traveling on the Alas flight (including an alleged terrorist, whose body was never claimed).

The prosecution is investigating Mohmoud Moutan Mohammad, Mahamad Tha Moutan, Gilberto Tomás Yangüez, and Ali Zaki Jalil for the crimes of intentional homicide and attacking means of transportation.

In 2020, the FBI issued a search note for Ali Zaki Jalil as a person who could have information about this attack in which citizens of Panama, Israel, the United States, and Colombia were traveling.

In August 2019, the prosecution asked the High Court to reopen the investigations, after on November 20, 2017, then-president Juan Carlos Varela received a letter from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he informed that intelligence of his country confirmed that Hezbollah was behind the attack.