BUENOS AIRES (JTA)  — If the phrase Argentina’s Jewish community has adopted to mark the 32nd anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in the country’s history sounds familiar to their compatriots, it’s intentional: “Today we cannot lose… our memory” echoes the soccer-mad nation’s World Cup slogan.

Fans chanting “Today we cannot lose” were ubiquitous throughout the 39-day tournament, which culminated Sunday with Argentina coming in second place to Spain.

Now the Jewish community hopes its spin on the chant will help force a reckoning with the 1994 bombing attack on the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people the day after that year’s World Cup final.

“It is difficult to understand why the process toward a trial in absentia has been allowed to move forward so slowly,” Osvaldo Armoza, the president of the JCC, known as AMIA, said Friday at a ceremony marking the attack.

The country’s Jewish leaders hope a new law allowing trial in absentia will bring some measure of justice for a community that has faced decades of frustrations and obstacles to bring accountability to the Iranian and Hezbollah officials alleged to be behind the attack.

Senator Patricia Bullrich, a political ally of President Javier Milei’s government, acknowledged to reporters at the event that the process has been slow, but said she is optimistic it will move forward.

“Justice is moving forward, although it has been slow, of course. It has been a very complex and difficult case,” she said. “But now, with the trial in absentia, the process is moving ahead, and that is very important.”

Last month, Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas used the new law to order a trial for the current chief of the Islamic........

© The Times of Israel