Again, Argentina cries; Truth assassinated in Jewish ctr probe

To the 85 people murdered in the never-prosecuted Iranian-linked bombing of Buenos Aires’ Jewish community center in 1994, another victim was added this week: Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor who was working to bring to justice both the killers and Argentinian officials linked to a two-decades-long coverup.

Nisman died of a single gunshot just hours before he was to testify in Agentina’s congress about his accusation five days earlier that President Cristina Fernandez and other top officials protected Iranian suspects in the case, considered Argentina’s worst terrorist attack.

His body was found in his locked apartment, a friend’s gun by his side.

Thousands of Agentinians took to the streets in several cities on Monday. In Buenos Aires, they gathered in the iconic Plaza de Mayo and in front of the presidential residence; some protesters, in a twist on France’s “Je Suis Charlie” movement, gathered under the slogan “I Am Nisman” and chanted “Justice! Justice!”

Nisman’s ex-wife, Judge Sandra Arroyo, was clear in answering reporters who asked on Tuesday whether her ex-husband’s death was a suicide.

“No,” she said.

Argentina has one of the largest concentrations of Jews outside of Israel, with estimates ranging around 200,000, mostly in Buenos Aires.

By The Associated Press

Alberto Nisman was found with a bullet wound on the right side of his head, a .22 caliber handgun and a casing next to his lifeless body, in the bathroom of his locked apartment, according to a preliminary autopsy that found no evidence of anyone else’s involvement in his death.

But what in other circumstances might have been seen as a clear-cut case of suicide is clouded by the stunning timing of the prosecutor’s death, just hours before he was to give potentially incendiary testimony to Argentina’s congress about his accusation that President Cristina Fernandez had reached a deal with Iran that shielded some officials from punishment for the attack, purportedly in exchange for increased trade, oil and financing from Iran.

Investigating prosecutor Viviana Fein said Monday that the preliminary autopsy found “no intervention” of others in Nisman’s death. “According to the autopsy, he fired the .22 caliber” handgun, she said.

However, Fein said she would not rule out the possibility that Nisman was “induced” to suicide, adding that the gun was not his and he left no suicide note.

“The firearm belonged to a collaborator of Nisman” who had given it to the prosecutor, Fein said.

She said on Tuesday that no gunpowder residue was found on his hands, but suggested that fact might not be relevant.

According to the autopsy, Nisman had a bullet entry-wound on the right side of his head but no exit wound. His body was found inside the bathroom and blocking the door, and there were no signs of forced entry or robbery in the apartment, Fein said.

Colleagues said they’d seen no sign he planned to kill himself. In condolence notices published Tuesday in the La Nacion newspaper, Nisman’s family and friends rejected that he committed suicide.

“A profound sadness and pain for a death so unjust,” said a notice from uncles, aunts and cousins.

Nisman had said he’d been threatened repeatedly for his work and, at the time of his death, 10 federal police officers had been assigned to protect him. Investigators planned to question the officers, starting Tuesday with those posted outside his building the night of his death.

Authorities only went to the apartment when police guarding Nisman, who had received threats, alerted them that he wasn’t answering phone calls.

Arroyo, his ex-wife, who met with investigators to learn about the progress of the probe, said answers would come in due time.

“There is an investigation underway. We must let justice proceed. I cannot make conjectures,” she told reporters.

In a letter on her official website, Fernandez lamented Nisman’s death, saying it generated “stupor and questions.” She initially used the word “suicide” in connection with his death but later put a question mark next to the word.

But doubts remained.

Congresswoman Cornelia Schmidt-Liermann, interviewed before the preliminary autopsy finding, said she had planned to pick Nisman up Monday at his residence and accompany him to for his testimony.

“Everybody who had contact with him the last 24 hours says he was confident” about his testimony, she told the Associated Press. “There is no indication, under any circumstances, that he killed himself.”

Schmidt-Liermann and others who knew Nisman said he lived under constant threats on his life from Iranian agents and pressure from the Argentine government.

Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for Secure and Free Society, a Washington-based think tank, said he was to testify with Nisman on a U.S. Congressional subcommittee in July 2013 but Nisman pulled out at the last minute “because of threats from the Argentine government” that he would be fired if he testified.

Nisman was appointed 10 years ago by Fernandez’s late husband, then-President Nestor Kirchner, to revive a floundering investigation into the car-bombing of the seven-story Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association building in Buenos Aires.

After years of inconclusive investigations, an Argentine judge in 2006 accepted Nisman’s request to order the arrest of a former Iranian president, foreign minister and other officials. Interpol later put most of them on its most-wanted list.

But Argentina and Iran reached agreement in 2013 to jointly investigate the attack, a move viewed with skepticism by Jewish leaders who feared it would undermine Nisman’s probe.

On Jan. 14, Nisman asked federal judge Dr. Ariel O. Lijo to call Fernandez and others, including Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, for questioning. Dr. Lijo was considering the request.

“The president and her foreign minister took the criminal decision to fabricate Iran’s innocence to sate Argentina’s commercial, political and geopolitical interests,” Nisman said last week.

On Tuesday, the Argentine Supreme Court disclosed the 289-page accusation that Nisman presented to Dr. Lijo.

In its powerful conclusion, Nisman said that Fernandez “gave an express order to design and execute a plan disconnecting the accused Iranians from the case of the AMIA attack.”

He added that not only did the president decide to carry out the “criminal plan of impunity” but was in control of it at all times.

Fernandez’s cabinet chief, Jorge Capitanich, said “it is absolutely impossible to accept false accusations” but it is “necessary that the clarification of [Nisman’s death] by the executive power be clear, convincing and undeniable.”

On Monday, Timerman said he was sorry to hear of Nisman’s death.

“What can I say?” he said from New York. “I’m simply saddened by the death of a person I knew and I hope that the cause of his death can be quickly determined.”

A federal judge had begun the process of deciding whether to hear the complaint and whether anyone should be summoned for questioning. Administration officials have called the prosecutor’s allegations ludicrous.

Israel’s foreign ministry expressed “deep sorrow” over Nisman’s death.

“Nisman, a courageous, venerable jurist who fought intrepidly for justice, acted with determination to expose the identities of the terrorists and their dispatchers,” a ministry statement said.