Dead Argentine prosecutor had drafted request for president’s arrest

Buenos Aires, February 3 The investigator probing the murder of an Argentine prosecutor who was discovered dead in unusual circumstances last month revealed on Tuesday that the prosecutor had written a plea for President Cristina Fernandez to be jailed for plotting to obstruct his investigation into the fatal bombing of a Jewish center.

As investigators searched Alberto Nisman’s flat, looking for evidence that the father of two had committed suicide or been killed, they discovered the documents in the garbage.

Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor whose death last month shocked Argentina, drafted a 26-page document, which was first published in the Argentine Spanish-language newspaper Clarin, calling for Fernandez and her foreign minister, Hector Timerman, to be detained.

The paper was discovered in a trash can at Nisman’s residence where authorities discovered him dead on January 18 from a gunshot wound to the head.

The 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish Center in Buenos Aires, which left hundreds of people injured and 85 dead, was investigated by Nisman as the principal investigator. Nisman has been openly critical of Kirchner and other government officials in recent months, accusing them of shielding Iranian officials from blame for the assault. Before his death, Nisman was scheduled to testify in a bombing-related hearing.

When Clarin first reported on them on Sunday, Viviana Fein, the main investigator investigating Nisman’s killing, originally disputed that a draft ever existed. Fein later apologized for her remarks on Tuesday, claiming that they had been misunderstood when speaking on Argentine radio.

“The word I should have used is: It is clear that there was a draft,” she stated on Argentine radio station Vorterix.

Fein’s office stated in a statement that several forms of documents were discovered in Nisman’s house, including in a trash receptacle, and that the material was all safeguarded as evidence and part of the inquiry. She also mentioned that next Monday will see further evidence testing. Fein refused to reveal if there was a warrant for the president’s arrest.

The chairman of the AMIA families’ group, Sergio Burstein stated that the scandal has lessened the grief experienced by the relatives of those slain in the bombing who are still waiting for justice 21 years after the incident.

“No one is thinking about our loss,” he declared.

Burstein stated that although Nisman’s death is tragic, he does not think there is substantial evidence linking President Fernandez to Iran. Nisman was not a hero or a martyr; he was just performing his job, and the legal system needs to find out what happened to him and how he died.

Nisman’s death is still being investigated . Some have claimed Nisman’s death was suicide  he was discovered with a gun next to him and his residence was locked from the inside. while others, including the Argentine president, have questioned this assertion.

Regarding Nisman’s passing, she said in a Facebook post, “They used him while he was alive and then they needed him dead.” She called Nisman’s passing “sad and terrible.”

The president of Argentina and the intelligence services are at odds more than ever. Last week, Fernandez called on Congress to dissolve the intelligence services because they had not changed since the country’s 1983 transition from military dictatorship to democracy.