An Argentine former senior intelligence official has claimed in court testimony that the administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner murdered a state prosecutor who had accused senior officials of having colluded with Iran to bomb Israeli targets in Buenos Aires. In January 2015, the prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, prompted international headlines by launching a criminal complaint against President Kirchner and several other notable personalities of Argentine political life. Nisman accused them of having colluded with the government of Iran to obstruct an investigation into the bombings of the Israeli embassy and a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires in the mid-1990s. A dozen people died in the bombing of the embassy, while another 85 were killed two years later, when the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina community center in the Argentine capital was bombed. Nisman was found dead on January 19, 2015, hours before he was due to give Congressional testimony on the subject. His body was found in the bathroom of his apartment, which had been locked from the inside.
Argentine authorities say they believe
Nisman killed himself with a single shot to the head from a .22 caliber
handgun. His family, however, as well as many notable personalities in
Argentina, believe he was murdered on the orders of government officials
who wanted to silence him. Such claims were reinforced this week
following a dramatic 17-hour court testimony by Antonio Horacio Stiuso,
better known as Jaime Stiuso, who served as chief operating officer for
Argentina’s Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado (SIDE) under President
Kirchner. Stiuso was fired after Nisman’s death, when the government
suddenly dissolved SIDE and replaced it with a new agency, the Agencia
Federal de Inteligencia. In justifying the dramatic move, President
Kirchner accused SIDE of feeding Nisman fabricated information
implicating her and her government minsters in a fictional collusion
with the Islamic Republic, and then killing him in order to destabilize
her rule. She then charged SIDE’s leadership, including Stiuso, with
involvement in Nisman’s killing. Stiuso promptly fled Buenos Aires for
Brazil, from where he flew to Miami, Florida, on February 19, using an Italian passport.
But the former spy recently returned to
Argentina and on Monday he testified in a closed-door hearing as part of
an official investigation into Nisman’s death. Although Stiuso gave his
testimony
in secret, Argentine media published several extracts on Tuesday, which
appear to have been leaked by witnesses. According to the excerpts,
Stiuso accused members of an “inner circle” inside President Kirchner’s
government of having killed Nisman and then tampered with incriminating
evidence from the scene of the crime. The former spy appears to have
told the judge in the case, Fabiana Palmaghina, that the state
prosecutor’s death “was intimately linked to the work he was doing”. He
is reported to have added that “the author of all this madness was that
woman, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
Stiuso has refrained from talking to the
media, and his comments to the court have not been confirmed. However,
the judge in the case, who previously favored the view that Nisman
committed suicide, has now referred Nisman’s case to a higher federal
court in Argentina with instructions that it be examined as a possible
homicide.
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