Early life and career Héctor Timerman was born in
Buenos Aires, to Risha (née Mindlin) and
Jacobo Timerman. He was of
Lithuanian Jewish descent. He was named editor-in-chief of
La Tarde, one of a number of periodicals owned by his father, in 1976, and steered the daily in support of the newly installed
dictatorship. His father's kidnapping on 15 April 1977 prompted Timerman to become active in the defense of
human rights, however, and in 1978 he was exiled to
New York City, where, in 1981, he co-founded Americas Watch, the Western Hemisphere counterpart to
Helsinki Watch that proceeded the creation of the unified
Human Rights Watch. He later served in the board of directors of the Fund for Free Expression, a
press freedom advocacy group based in
London. During his exile in the U.S., he gained American citizenship.
Journalist and activist Timerman earned a
master's degree in international relations at
Columbia University in 1981, and wrote several op-ed columns for the
New York Times,
Los Angeles Times,
Newsweek, and
The Nation. After returning to Argentina in 1989, he founded two
news magazines,
Tres Puntos and
Debate, and became a regular contributor to
Noticias and
Ámbito Financiero. Timerman remained active in human rights advocacy. He served as a director of the Buenos Aires office of the
Permanent Assembly for Human Rights from 2002 to 2004, and was President of the International Coalition of Historic Site Museums of Conscience. Timerman was the first witness to give testimony in the trial of
Christian von Wernich, a former
Buenos Aires Province Police chaplain convicted of complicity in numerous dictatorship-era murders and tortures (including that of his father). Taiana's replacement by Timerman was announced the same day. Timerman's tenure was marked by intensified diplomatic foreign controversies. Bringing perpetrators of the 1994
AMIA bombing to justice was prioritized, pursuant to which he persuaded the neighboring government of
Bolivia to cut short a state visit to that country in 2011 by Iranian Defense Minister
Ahmad Vahidi (whose arrest Argentine authorities had sought since 2007 in connection with the attack), while also working to establish a Truth Commission jointly with
Iran in 2013 to investigate the 1994 bombing. He likewise advanced ongoing efforts against
vulture funds seeking payment at face value on bonds bought from resellers for pennies on the dollar, and whose attempts to
block payments to all other bondholders continued to threaten Argentina's successful earlier
debt restructuring. The longstanding
Falkland Islands sovereignty dispute figured prominently during Timerman's tenure as well. Timerman said, "We have been trying to find a peaceful solution for 180 years. I think the fanatics are not in Buenos Aires." His policy regarding the dispute remained assertive, refusing to accept a letter from a member of the
Legislative Assembly of the Falkland Islands who ambushed Timerman following talks in February 2013 with U.K. Foreign Secretary
William Hague, obtaining declarations in support of Argentine sovereignty from African and Latin American nations, and later declaring that the Falklands "will be under our control within 20 years." He nevertheless described the dispute in January 2014 as a "peaceful struggle". After his double-dealing regarding Argentine relations with Iran and the fraudulent efforts to attain justice for the 1994 AMIA bombing, the Argentine Jewish community released a joint non-condolence "no comment" release after his death. ==Honours and awards==