The prosecutor who last week accused Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and others of working with Iran to cover up a 1994 terror bombing was found dead in his apartment on Sunday, hours before he was to testify in Congress.
Alberto Nisman ‘s body was discovered inside a bathroom at his apartment on the 13th floor of an apartment tower here in this capital city. A 22-calibre weapon was found near him, according to a statement from Argentina’s Security Secretariat. There were no signs of forced entry into the apartment, the statement said.
On Wednesday, Mr. Nisman filed a criminal complaint that accused Mrs. Kirchner, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman and others of conspiring to cover up an investigation into Iran’s alleged involvement in the attack on a Jewish community center here that killed 85 people.
Mr. Nisman was supposed to appear at a congressional hearing on Monday to provide more details about the allegations, which Argentine officials have vigorously denied.
“This is truly absurd,” Mrs. Kirchner’s cabinet chief, Jorge Capitanich, said of the allegations last week. He called the criminal complaint “outrageous, illogical, and irrational” and said Mrs. Kirchner had always displayed a long commitment to resolving the case.
In the complaint, Mr. Nisman asked a judge to freeze $23 million of assets belonging to Mrs. Kirchner and the others. He also urged the court to question Mrs. Kirchner about her role in the alleged plot.
In a meeting with reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Nisman said he had “a great deal of evidence” implicating the president in the matter. He said the evidence was based largely on more than two years of intercepted phone calls between people close to Mrs. Kirchner and others, including Mohsen Rabbani of Iran. Mr. Rabbani, a former cultural attaché at Iran’s embassy in Buenos Aires, is a suspect in the bombing and is the target of an Interpol international arrest alert.
Read more at THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
{Matzav.com Newscenter}
