An Argentine prosecutor who had accused Argentine President Cristina Fernandez of shielding Iranian suspects' involvement in the South American country's worst terrorist attack has been found dead, hours before he was due to present his evidence in parliament.
Alberto Nisman, 51, had spent the past decade investigating the 1994 bombings of a Buenos Aires Jewish centre, for which no one has ever been convicted, according to Reuters. On Monday afternoon, he was expected to present a 300-page dossier to a parliamentary committee. "I could be dead by the end of this," he had allegedly told one of the reporters at anti-Kirchner newspaper Clarin on Wednesday.
But before he could testify in a Congressional hearing on Monday, he was found dead in the bathroom of his Buenos Aires apartment late Sunday despite being assigned with ten on-duty federal agents for protection, federal prosecutor Viviana Fein told Telam, Argentina's official news agency.
"We can confirm that it was a gunshot wound, .22 caliber," she said, adding that it was too early in the investigation to know what had happened.
"Everything indicates it was a suicide," Secretary of National Security Sergio Berni told local new outlets. "We have to see if gunpowder is found on his hands."
In 2005, Nisman had been appointed by Fernandez's late husband, then President Nestor Kirchner, to investigate the 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people and injured more than 200, making it one of the deadliest attacks on Jews since World War II, the Associated Press reported.
Although Iran denied any involvement and Fernandez attempted to form a joint "truth commission" in 2013 with Iran to continue investigating the bombing, Nisman claimed he had years of phone calls proving the goal of the commission was to get the Iranian suspects off the hook, so Argentina could normalize relations with Iran and get oil needed to close the country's yearly $7 billion energy deficit.
On Wednesday, the 51-year-old had formally accused the president and several of her governmental colleagues of working out a deal granting immunity to at least two former state-sponsored terrorists in exchange for much-needed Iranian oil, reported The Wall Street Journal.
"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.
However, the allegations have been described as "crazy, absurd, illogical, irrational, ridiculous, and unconstitutional," by Fernandez's Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich.
But Anibal Fernandez, secretary general for the presidency, said he was "dumbfounded" by Nisman's death, saying there was "absolutely nothing normal" about it.
Additionally, Elisa Carrio, leader of the Civic Coalition, an opposition party, bluntly called Nisman's death "an assassination," stating she did not accept that it was a suicide.
Meanwhile, the official report from Argentina's Ministry of National Security indicates his death was a suicide, reported The Daily Beast.
"Nisman, a courageous, venerable jurist who fought intrepidly for justice, acted with determination to expose the identities of the terrorists and their dispatchers," Israel's foreign ministry statement said.
