Hezbollah Terrorist Leader Charged in 1994 Bombing at Jewish Center That Killed 85 People

A high-ranking member of the Hezbollah terrorist group was charged in New York Wednesday for a 1994 bombing that killed 85 people at South America’s largest Jewish community center. 

The suspected terrorist, Samuel Salman El Reda, 58, allegedly helped plan and execute the bombing at the Asociaión Mutual Israelita Argentina building in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as a leader of Hezbollah’s international militant wing.  

The bombing killed 85 people and injured hundreds of others, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. 

El Reda, of Lebanon, allegedly relayed information to operatives working with Hezbollah’s so-called “Unit 910,” which carried out the bombing, according to federal prosecutors. 

In addition to the 1994 Jewish center attack, El Reda has helped lead international terrorist operations for Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shia terrorist organization, since the early 1990s and has dispatched operatives from the group to South America and Asia, according to federal prosecutors. 

In 2011, El Reda dispatched an operative to Panama to conduct “pre-operational” surveillance of the Panama Canal and embassies controlled by the U.S. and Israel, federal prosecutors allege. 

El Reda, who is at large, was charged with providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization among other crimes, and faces a maximum of 55 years in prison if caught and convicted. 

“As alleged, for decades, Samuel Salman El Reda has led terrorist operations on behalf of the Islamic Jihad Organization of Hizballah, including a 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires that massacred 85 innocent victims,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement after the charges were unsealed Wednesday.