Death of the lawyer who accused Argentina’s president is ‘disaster’
ARGENTINIAN JEWISH leaders were in uproar this week after the lawyer investigating a cover-up over the bombing of the Amia Jewish centre was found dead hours before he was due to give evidence against the country’s president.
Alberto Nisman was found on Sunday locked in his apartment in Buenos Aires, with a bullet through his temple and a handgun beside him. A preliminary autopsy suggested that he had committed suicide, although there is intense speculation in Argentina that he was the victim of an assassination.
MrNismanallegedlastweekthat President Cristina Fernandez, her Foreign Minister Hector Timmerman and other officials had been involved in a “criminal conspiracy”.
In a detailed document, he claimed they had “tried to erase Iran” from the 1994 Amia attack in Buenos Aires, which left 85 dead and was widely believed
Found dead: Nisman to have been perpetrated by Iranian agents.
The president of Amia, Julio Schlosser, together with Leonardo Jmlenitsky, the head of Argentinian Jewish umbrella group Daia, met members of the Argentinian government on Monday to demand that the investigations begun by Mr Nisman continue after his death.
Mr Schlosser said that Mr Nisman was the latest victim of the Amia attack: “I would even go so far as to say that this is a new explosion in the Amia case. We are dismayed, because the death of the 51-year-old lawyer is the death of a very important piece in the Amia case. This is a terrible day, a day of mourning, of great consternation. It is a disaster. We hope the prosecutor finds peace, the peace he never found among us.”
Mr Jmlenitsky said that Mr Nisman’s ten years of investigating the Amia attack meant that he was “irreplaceable for us … This is no ordinary death.”
Mr Nisman had been due to testify at a closed-door hearing in parliament on Tuesday in which he would have presented his evidence that the president and her allies conducted secret negotiations with Iran. In his document, he said they hoped to gain access to Iranian oil supplies in exchange for the cancellation of an Interpol arrest warrant against the suspected bombers, including Iran’s former cultural attaché in Buenos Aires, Mohsen Rabbani.
Mr Nisman had ordered a judge to question the president and Mr Timmerman, accusing them of plotting to fabricate evidence which would make the Amia attack appear to have been carried out by locals.
Mr Nisman’s findings were based on the content of secret telephone conversations between officials. Shortly after his death a judge ordered urgent measures to protect the telephone evidence.
Mr Jmlenitsky and Mr Schlosser announced that a special event to honour Mr Nisman, under the slogan “Truth and Justice”, would take place in Buenos Aires on Wednesday.