By Charles Newbery
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina
Officials hinted at suicide on Monday in the death of an Argentine prosecutor just days after he accused President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of covering up Iran’s alleged involvement in a deadly Jewish center bombing.
Alberto Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment early Monday with a gunshot wound to his head, leading to speculation that he may have been killed.
Viviana Fein, the prosecutor investigating his death, said in a statement that based on a preliminary autopsy report “there was no intervention of third parties” in the death.
She said, however, that she was awaiting more evidence before discarding any hypothesis.
Fein said that the gun, a 22. caliber handgun that was found next to his body, belonged to one of Nisman’s employees and that it was Nisman who pulled the trigger.
The employee, whose name was not disclosed, took the firearm to the 13th floor apartment Sunday morning because Nisman said he wanted to protect himself. The employee is believed to be the last person to have seen Nisman alive, according to Fein.
Nisman made headlines last week after he accused the president, her foreign minister Hector Timerman, and other officials and supporters of being involved in a plot to erase Iran’s alleged role in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in Buenos Aries. The attack killed 85 people and injured more than 300. It was the deadliest terror attack in Argentina.
Fernandez de Kirchner, according to his investigations, wanted to rekindle commercial relations with Iran in order to buy much-needed oil and natural gas supplies from the Republic in exchange for beef and grains.
For that to happen, Iran insisted that its former officials wanted for questioning about the bombing be expunged so that their names can be removed from Interpol’s wanted list, which is preventing them from leaving Iran.
That has not yet happened, foiling commercial trade between the countries – and now brandishing the president as an orchestrator of a criminal cover-up, according to Nisman.
After he made the accusation, Nisman was riled with criticism from the government that called his allegations false and ludicrous.
That led Nisman to say that he feared for his life.
“I could come out dead from this,” he told Clarin newspaper in one of his last interviews before the weekend, which he spent in his Puerto Madero apartment preparing to give evidence of his findings before Congress on Monday.
While suicide is a possible cause of death, Fein said she hasn’t “ruled out if there has been some kind of inducement or instigation through threats, either through calls or text messages,” while on Radio America.
“Nobody said this is a suicide or a homicide. It is a suspicious death,” she said. “Until we have all the evidence, we are still investigating.”
