Argentine prosecutor who accused Cristina Kirchner over 1994 bombings found dead

He accused Mrs Kirchner and her foreign minister, Hector Timerman, of attempting to “erase” Iran’s role in the attack, in return for favourable oil deals.

“The president and her foreign minister took the criminal decision to fabricate Iran’s innocence to sate Argentina’s commercial, political and geopolitical interests,” he said. In return for the oil, Argentina would sell wheat to Iran.

Mr Nisman said he wanted to question them both, and was waiting for a judge to decide whether there was a case for the president and foreign minister to answer. Administration officials dismissed the charges as “ridiculous”, and Iran has always denied that it colluded with Hizbollah to carry out the deadly attack.

But late on Sunday or in the early hours of Monday Mr Nisman was found dead, in the bathroom of his 13th-floor apartment in the fashionable revitalised docklands district of Puerto Madero.

A .22 calibre handgun was by his side, after his mother was alerted by security guards in the building that he had not collected his Sunday papers and was not answering the telephone. The door was locked from inside, and a locksmith had to be called.

“All signs point to suicide,” said Sergio Berni, Argentine security secretary.

But friends of the lawyer were deeply troubled by the idea that he would have killed himself.

Andres Oppenheimer, an Argentine journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting of the Iran-Contra affair, said: “Nisman told me in an email on Saturday that he was ‘obviously’ interested in doing an interview this week. Seemed confident.”

Laureano Pérez Izquierdo, writing in Info BAE, said that his friend – who he had met frequently for coffee over the past two years, said “I’m staking my life on this”.

Mr Nisman was encyclopedias about the 1994 attack, said Mr Pérez – he had all the identities, locations, names of shell companies and phone connections committed to memory. Mr Pérez described him as hyperactive, and extremely focused – he was confident that he would get to the bottom of who ordered the attack.

In November 2013 he told Mr Pérez: “I’ve got something which is an absolute scandal. They’re in it up to their necks.”

Mr Pérez would press him for details, ringing him and asking if he had any news. “Nothing yet,” Mr Nisman would reply. “But I’m getting closer. Very close.”

He refused to share any detail of the investigation with Mr Pérez, because much of the report contained classified names of secret service operatives.

Mr Pérez wrote: “Nisman was nervous. But he was always nervous. He was conscious of the impact his presentation would have. ‘I’ve got everything proved. The deal with Iran is the result of a plan to grant immunity to those accused.’

“He also knew what awaited him. ‘They’re going to come after me,’ he would repeat to anyone who listened. ‘They are going to say anything and everything about me.’”

Mr Nisman on Wednesday had warned his 15-year-old daughter that people would start saying terrible things about him.

Mr Pérez continued: “He also said in passing that he was being threatened. ‘Make a complaint,’ I told him. But he didn’t want to. He said that first he had to talk to his ex-wife, who was in Europe with their daughters, and that he didn’t want the girls to live in a nightmare scenario with bodyguards to take them to school.”

Mr Pérez said he spoke to Mr Nisman three times on Saturday, the last time at 8.37pm. On Sunday morning he sent him a text message which his telephone says was never received.

^{Members of the coast guard carry the body of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman outside his home (Reuters)}

Anibal Fernandez, secretary general for the presidency, said he was “dumbfounded” by Mr Nisman’s death, saying there was “absolutely nothing normal” about it.

Israel’s foreign ministry issued a statement expressing sorrow, praising him as a courageous jurist who “worked with great determination to expose the attack’s perpetrators and dispatchers.”

“The State of Israel hopes Argentina’s authorities will continue Nisman’s work, and take every possible effort to bring those behind the Argentina attacks to justice.”

Elisa Carrio, leader of the Civic Coalition, an opposition party, bluntly called Nisman’s death “an assassination,” saying she did not accept that it was a suicide.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/southamerica/argentina/11354521/Argentine-prosecutor-who-accused-Cristina-Kirchner-over-1994-bombings-found-dead.html