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Nisman Drafted Arrest Warrants for Argentina’s President, Foreign Minister

The June 2014 documents were found in the dead prosecutor’s garbage

by
Gabriela Geselowitz
February 04, 2015
A woman holds a sign reading 'Thank you Nisman for your honesty' at the funeral of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman at La Tablada Israelite cemetery in Buenos Aires, on January 29, 2015.(STR/AFP/Getty Images)
A woman holds a sign reading ‘Thank you Nisman for your honesty’ at the funeral of Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman at La Tablada Israelite cemetery in Buenos Aires, on January 29, 2015.(STR/AFP/Getty Images)

In another dramatic turn in the mysterious death of Alberto Nisman, investigators announced Tuesday that the prosecutor had written the draft of arrest warrants for Argentinian President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman, the New York Times reports.

Before his death, Nisman was treading new territory in his years-long investigation into the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center that killed 85 people. He was found with a gunshot wound to the head hours before he was supposed to present evidence implicating Kirchner in covering up Iran’s alleged involvement in the attack.

Prosecutor Viviana Fein said that her investigative team found the draft in Nisman’s garbage, correcting her earlier statement that the document did not exist. The draft appears to be from June 2014, making its presence in Nisman’s garbage the night of his death months later all the more suspicious. Still, Nisman’s official complaint against Kirchner made no mention of arrest.

The Kirchner administration, which has been struggling to handle Nisman’s death from a PR perspective, had previously torn up an earlier article about the draft in front of reporters. The official response to his death was to first declare it a suicide, then suggest a conspiracy against the government. One Jewish journalist recently fled Argentina for Israel, citing harassment for his articles about Nisman’s death.

Had Nisman succeeded in arresting Kirchner, “It would have been a scandal on a level previously unseen,” political analyst Sergio Berensztein told the New York Times. The ultimate fate of the draft, along with Nisman’s entire investigation, remains unclear.

The populace of Argentina has become bitterly divided over Nisman’s investigation, ranging from demonstrations protesting the government, to rhetoric against the late prosecutor that has become anti-Semitic (Nisman was Jewish). Since his death, posters have appeared in Buenos Aires reading, “The good Jew is the dead Jew. The good Jew is Nisman.”

Gabriela Geselowitz is a writer and the former editor of Jewcy.com.