Argentine special prosecutor dead a day before congress hearing (1 Viewer)

[Equal Hater]

From Yahoo:

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — Argentina's government said Monday that a prosecutor who had accused President Cristina Fernandez of shielding Iranian suspects in the nation's deadliest terror attack died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside his locked apartment, a declaration sure to be closely scrutinized. Alberto Nisman, who had been investigating the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people, was found in the bathroom of his apartment late Sunday, hours before he was to testify in a Congressional hearing about the case.



Now this one has all the makings for a Hollywood movie. Nisman spent years investigating this case, which already had found Iranians were involved in it. Last week he publicly accused the current president and other high government officials of conspiring to hide evidence in exchange for better trade and business relations with Iran and, in what it is now his last declarations to Clarin, the biggest opposition newspaper, he said "I can lose my life over this". He had federal police assigned to his protection due to the constant threats he received, but mysteriously the day before his congressional hearing it is said he told them to "not to worry about coming on Sunday because I expect to be home all day long". Surprisingly, Monday morning he shows up with a bullet in his head inside his apartment. They also found the report he was to present right on top of his desk but with some missing pages.

 

[Equal Hater]

Just read the gun powder residue test from his right hand came negative.

 

[Wayne Kerr]

ill have to check this shit out after work.

 

[Tooly]

It's all coincidental.

 

[Equal Hater]

Ok just to keep you in the loop in case you want to follow this story, the President is saying people that was providing false information to the prosecutor are the ones that killed him because all eyes will go on her, which is pretty genius on her part. It creates doubt.

 

[rottenfresh]

The current president and high government officials will continue to trade and do business with Iran now that they have successfully bumped this fucker off! When bringing the hammer down, you don't tell your victim to move his foot.

 

[Wayne Kerr]

Ok just to keep you in the loop in case you want to follow this story, the President is saying people that was providing false information to the prosecutor are the ones that killed him because all eyes will go on her, which is pretty genius on her part. It creates doubt.

so a suicide has been thrown out?

 

[Equal Hater]

so a suicide has been thrown out?

No it is still being investigated as a suicide, even when new details are surfacing that prove to the contrary. Autopsy also revealed the kill shot came from a .22 Beretta pistol that was in between 15 to 20 centimeters from the head. They also found no bruises consisting with a body falling down to the ground after being shot, so he was most likely on his knees when he got shot. Waiting to hear about the trajectory of the bullet showing a straight, upward or downward pattern. That should clearly indicate exactly how the shot came to hit the head.

 

[Wayne Kerr]

thanx. ive looked into it a bit but havent found anything other than the info youve posted.

 

[Wayne Kerr]

not much new but still pretty thorough....

Was An Argentinian Prosecutor Killed to Cover Up an Iranian Terror Plot?
jordan sargent

1

For the past 10 years, an Argentinian prosecutor named Alberto Nisman had been investigating a 1994 bombing at a Jewish community center that killed 85 people in Buenos Aires. This past Sunday, he was found dead in his high rise apartment with a gunshot wound to his head. Originally, the Argentinian government claimed Nisman committed suicide, but yesterday president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner reversed course in a bizarre letter that intimates Nisman was murdered.

The official explanation of Nisman's death had been questioned from the start. The prosecutor had devoted his career to solving the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentinian history, and in the process he made a number of enemies, a few of whome were members of his own government.

But it was the timing of his death that seemed particularly suspicious: Nisman's life ended the day before he was set to present a report before the country's congress detailing evidence he believed proved that current high-ranking Argentinian officials agreed to cover up Iran's involvement in the bombing in exchange for oil.

From a Wednesday New York Times article:

Intercepted conversations between representatives of the Iranian and Argentine governments point to a long pattern of secret negotiations to reach a deal in which Argentina would receive oil in exchange for shielding Iranian officials from charges that they orchestrated the bombing of a Jewish community center in 1994.

The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress.

But the intercepted telephone conversations he described before his death outline an elaborate effort to reward Argentina for shipping food to Iran — and for seeking to derail the investigation into a terrorist attack in the Argentine capital that killed 85 people.

There was an obvious motive for someone—or some organization or government—to kill Nisman, and the exact circumstances of his death are equally as suspicious. Though a gun was found near Nisman's body, he left no suicide note, and further, forensics from the scene appear to not support the theory that he killed himself.

From The Atlantic:

For starters, Nisman, a high-ranking Argentine prosecutor, had left no suicide note. More curiously, his cause of death⎯a gunshot to head⎯had no exit wound, giving rise to the theory that he had been shot from a distance. Next, a forensics analysis of his body determined that there were no traces of gunpowder on Nisman's fingers, constituting yet another red flag. Then, contrary to reports, a locksmith said he had found a hidden service door that had been left open when he was first called to Nisman's apartment.

If this characterization of the events is correct, it sounds like Nisman was murdered in a manner that could inspire a Bourne film, with someone breaking into his apartment to kill him and then staging the scene to appear as if it was a suicide.

But, at this point, how Nisman died is perhaps less interesting and important than the question of who might have killed him. Kirchner, according to the New York Times, wrote Thursday that Nisman was being manipulated by an unnamed group who then murdered him.

"They used him while he was alive and then they needed him dead," Mrs. Kirchner wrote in the letter, which she subtitled, in part: "The suicide (that I am convinced) was not suicide."

That Kirchner, the Argentinian president, personally and publicly pushed back against the idea that Nisman killed himself seems to indicate that the country won't be standing behind the theory for much longer.

Unfortunately for Kirchner, the list of logical suspects is short, and it would have to include her government broadly...and her specifically. In her long and rambling letter, she neglects to accuse any specific person or group—simply a general "they":

Prosecutor Nisman was not made to come back only to denounce something which they knew had no grounds and could not be sustained. When journalist Sandra Russo analyzed the case in Página 12 newspaper under the heading"El truco de la confusión" [The trick of confusion], she claimed that: "They wanted to use Nisman alive and now they will use him dead". But she is wrong. They used him alive and then they needed him dead. As sad and terrible as that.

Last Wednesday, just days before his death, Nisman testified before a judge and named Kirchner as a direct negotiator in the deal that would have kept Iran's alleged involvement in the 1994 bombing secret.

Via The Washington Post:

"The president and her foreign minister took the criminal decision to fabricate Iran's innocence to sate Argentina's commercial, political and geopolitical interests," Nisman said.

While Argentinian officials obviously had an incentive to order Nisman's murder, they weren't the only ones: Iran, of course, was deeply implicated, as was Hezbollah, the terrorist organization that Nisman has said for years worked in concert with Iran to plan and carry out the 1994 bombing.

If Nisman was murdered, whoever did it was so desperate to have him dead that they killed him at the exact moment when his death would be the most suspicious. His evidence, at least, seems to be damning enough to cause that exact sort of panic.

From The New York Times:

The complaint asserts that the negotiators included Argentine intelligence operatives and Mohsen Rabbani, a former Iranian cultural attaché in Argentina charged with helping to coordinate the bombing.

In one transcript from 2013, an Argentine union leader and influential supporter of Mrs. Kirchner said he was acting on the orders of the "boss woman," adding that the government was open to sending a team from the national oil company to advance the negotiations.

"He's very interested in exchanging what they have for grains and beef," said the union leader, Luis D'Elía, referring to a powerful Argentine minister with whom he had just met.

Another intercept shows negotiators talking about ways to place blame for the bombing on right-wing groups and activists.

Yet another transcript includes a discussion about swapping not just Argentine grains, but weapons as well, for Iranian oil.

Nisman seemed to know that he was making allegations that could put his life in danger. The day before his death, he told a reporter, "I might get out of this dead."

 

[Wayne Kerr]

Arrest Warrant For Argentine President Found at Home of Dead Prosecutor

Jordan Sargent
Filed to: argentina

1234

A draft of a warrant ordering the arrest of Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and foreign minister Héctor Timerman was found at the apartment of Alberto Nisman, a prosecutor who was shot to death in his home last month. Nisman was set to testify the next day in front of the country's congress that de Kirchner had conspired with Iran to cover up the cause of a 1994 bombing that killed 85 people in Buenos Aires.


Was An Argentinian Prosecutor Killed to Cover Up an Iranian Terror Plot?
For the past 10 years, an Argentinian prosecutor named Alberto Nisman had been investigating a 1994 … Read more

The existence of the warrant—which was discovered in a trash can—was revealed today by the lead investigator looking into the mysterious and suspicious death of Nisman, who had spent the past 10 years investigating the terrorist attack at a Jewish community center. In the weeks before his death, Nisman claimed that he had evidence proving that de Kirchner negotiated with the Iranian government to obscure their role in the bombing in exchange for access the country's oil.

But one day before he was set to present the details of his allegations to Argentina's congress, Nisman was found dead in his apartment with a bullet wound to his head. Originally, the government claimed that he had committed suicide, but a few days later de Kirchner backed off that statement, eventually opening a formal inquiry into the prosecutor's death.

Given that Nisman had made it known that he thought de Kirchner personally negotiated with Iran to cover up the cause of the deadliest terror attack in the country's history, there are several individuals and governments who would have had obvious motives to see Nisman dead—and, in fact, the government's initial explanation that Nisman died of a suicide was met with immediate skepticism in Argentina.

Now, after the revelation that Nisman had written up a document for the arrest of Argentina's president, the brunt of the public's suspicion will weigh even heavier on the country's government. Still, it's not clear who carried out—or might have ordered—Nisman's death; the Argentine government is merely in a group of potential suspects along with the Iranian government, Hamas (who also had a hand in the 1994 attack) and any number of individual actors.

Plus, as MSNBC's Chris Hayes points out, perhaps someone wants to make the Argentine government look like the guilty party:

 

[D.O.A.]

Guilty of planning assassination or not, their president is still a corrupt sneaky bitch.

 

[Equal Hater]

Leaked picture by a government agent in charge of the incident shows Nisman dead by the tub.

 

[Equal Hater]

Alleged weapon used to end his life. I had a pistol exactly as this one many years ago. .22 caliber very quiet and easy to conceal pistol.