E/CN.4/2002/73/Add.1 page 19 Related to this case, on 1 July 1995 in the Belgrano district of Buenos Aires, a group of skinheads attacked a young man who they took to be Jewish. The victim, C. Salgueiro, had gone out to buy cigarettes when a skinhead and two women approached him. The skinhead began to insult him: he spat in his face and called him “Jewish shit”. Meanwhile, the women went to fetch a group of some 15 skinheads who beat Salgueiro up, leaving him seriously injured; After the first trial, in which aggravating circumstances as provided for under the Anti-Discrimination Act were applied, Federal Criminal Court No. 3, sentenced three skinheads on 17 April 1998 to three years’ immediate imprisonment for assault and wounding, the sentence being increased on account of the discriminatory motivation. The convicted persons appealed and, on 17 February 1999, the Court of Criminal Cassation quashed the ruling and referred the case to another court. The ground for annulment invoked by the Court was the absence of racial hatred inasmuch as “the anti-Semitic statements were essentially a kind of war cry commonly used by skinheads”. On 6 March 2001, seized of this decision, the Supreme Court, on strictly formal grounds (“the special appeal, denial of which led to this complaint, is not against a judgement which is final or may be assimilated to such. Accordingly, having heard the arguments of the Procurator-General, the complaint is set aside”), confirmed the decision, despite the prosecutor’s statement referring to the discriminatory nature of the offence; This ruling has been interpreted by several non-governmental interlocutors as a failure to apply the Anti-Discrimination Act, even though the Act provides that discrimination can be based on religious grounds. Representatives of the Jewish community have expressed the view that the decision is evidence of the presence within the Argentine system of justice of anti-Semitic judges; Mention was also made by the representatives of a parcel bomb attack, on 7 April 2001, against the Jewish orchestra conductor and musician Alberto Merenson. The investigators stated that they were focusing on individuals having been involved in anti-Semitism in the recent past; Lastly, representatives of the Jewish community and non-governmental interlocutors raised the issue of the bombing of AMIA and, according to them, the lack of preventive measures (inadequate and ineffective surveillance of Jewish premises following the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in March 1992) and any serious investigation; On this latter point, Jewish representatives and non-governmental organizations stated that the investigation had encountered a series of obstacles arising from serious negligence and irregularities such as the loss and destruction of significant pieces of evidence and difficulties raised by members of the security forces. By way of example, the following facts were reported: during the investigation, samples of the soil used to position the bomb were lost; tests that would have allowed the origin of the bomb to have been established were not carried out (tests called for by the fire department itself); no effort was made to reconstruct the remains of the vehicle used; samples of the rubble