Official report finds death of AMIA prosecutor Nisman murder, not suicide

BUENOS AIRES (JTA) – AMIA Jewish center bombing special prosecutor Alberto Nisman was assassinated by two people who drugged and beat him and then manipulated the crime scene to make it look like a suicide, according to an official report.

The report was submitted Friday to federal Judge Julián Ercolini and prosecutor Eduardo Taiano, who are investigating the death of the Argentinean prosecutor. If Nisman’s death is investigated as a murder, information technology specialist Diego Lagomarsino would be the main suspect.

In January 2015, Lagomarsino said that he went to Nisman’s apartment to give him a “very old” .22-caliber pistol with which to protect himself. Hours later, Nisman was found dead from a bullet for that same gun fired from point-blank range above his right ear. So far, Lagomarsino has been charged only for lending the pistol to Nisman.

The report was produced by forensic investigators from the country’s border patrol guard, or Gendarmerie. The new toxicology analysis of Nisman’s body discovered the drug ketamine, an anesthetic mostly used on animals and as a party drug. The analysis also found that he had been beaten and that another person tried to subdue and control him.

Taiano reportedly is analyzing whether Nisman’s death occurred on January 18, 2015, the night when his body was found, or on the previous day. In that case, Lagomarsino, could move even more into the spotlight since he was in Nisman’s apartment twice that day. According to La Nacion newspaper, Lagomarsino was under hidden surveillance out of concern that he might flee justice.

Nisman’s body was found on January 18, 2015, hours before he was to present evidence to Argentine lawmakers that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner covered up Iran’s role in the 1994 attack in Buenos Aires that left 85 dead and hundreds wounded.

More than a year after Nisman’s death, the investigation was moved to the federal courts, meaning that the case was being investigated as a political murder rather than as a suicide.

Since then, Taiano, has led the investigation into Nisman’s death and received death threats. Taiano ordered an interdisciplinary committee to analyze the crime scene and to develop a report.