An Argentinian prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, who accused his country’s president of covering up the investigation of the bombing of a Jewish Community Centre, has been found, hours before he was supposed to testify.
An Argentinian prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, who accused his country’s president of covering up the investigation of the bombing of a Jewish Community Centre, has been found, hours before he was supposed to testify.
Reports say that Nisman, 51, who had been examining the 1994 blast that left 85 people dead and over which Iranian officials have accused, was found dead in his apartment in Buenos Aires. A small calibre handgun was found next to his body by security guards, alerted on Sunday afternoon by Nisman’s mother who said he was not answering his phone, after which he was found dead in his 13th floor apartment.
The Argentinian officials declared this death as an obvious suicide, however there is quite a number of skeptical accounts regarding his death, due to which it should not be taken at face value.
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) strongly condemns this mysterious death, and offers its condolences to his relatives and friends. In order to get to an honest evaluation of what actually happened to Nisam and in the light of his conspicuous role on the investigation regarding the Iranian regime’s terrorism, the NCRI’s foreign affairs committee calls for launching an independent international investigation.
It is said that Nisman was due to give evidence at a congressional committee hearing on Monday, to outline his accusations against President Fernandez and other officials. To provide proof of his allegations, he had published a 300-page report on Wednesday alleging that the president and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman had opened a secret back channel to Iranians suspected of involvement in the bombing of the Community Centre. Moreover, he claimed that the scheme was intended to clear the Iranian suspects, so that there would be no hindrance in a trade deal between Iran and Argentina.
The critics of the Argentinian authorities have put forward Nisman’s main claims as the reason that he was killed, rather than this only being a suicide. According to investigations, he had issued a request that a judge question the president and the foreign minister “for being authors and accomplices of an aggravated cover-up and obstruction of justice regarding the Iranians accused of the AMIA [Israeli-Argentine Mutual Association] terrorist attack”.
He had also told a Buenos Aires radio station earlier in June 2013, that he has certain that he had indisputable proof, where any other prosecutor who sat in his office, or was in his shoes, would reach to the same conclusions. Interpol was also included in investigations by him, where he urged them to take further measures in order to ensure the arrest of all eight defendants in the bombing. For him, the evidence that revealed that Hassan Rouhani, the current president of the Iranian regime, had been on the special Iranian government committee that plotted the 1994 bombing, was conclusive.
The car bombing of the seven-story Jewish centre was the worst terrorist attacks in Argentina’s history, where the death of Alberto Nisman, has opened another window of mystery, one that still cannot confirm who was behind it.
