Nisman puts Argentina in the dock

The discovery of the dead body of Argentine judge Alberto Nisman in his Buenos Aires flat has justifiably refocused international attention on a country that has always seemed to inhabit its very own political hinterland somewhere between a western democracy infiltrated by the Mafia and a third world banana republic.
Nisman was found dead on Sunday night in his flat on the 13th floor of a luxury tower block in the capital’s prestigious Puerto Madero district just hours away from appearing before the country’s law makers in Congress to explain what lay behind his controversial claims that the government of president Cristina Fernandez had been involved in a major terrorist cover-up with Iran.
The judge had been investigating the bomb attack on a Jewish community AMIA centre in Buenos Aires in 1994 that left 85 dead and many others wounded. While the attack is suspected by elements of Israeli and western intelligence agencies of having been the work of a terrorist plot involving Iran, local police and complicit Argentine politicians linked to the Peronist party, noone has ever been brought to justice.
Nisman claimed publicly last week that President Fernández had conducted secret negotiations through her foreign minister Hector Timerman with Tehran, offering to cover up the involvement of Iranian officials in the AMIA terrorist outrage as part of a grain-for-oil swap deal. Argentinian cabinet chief, Jorge Capitanich, said Nisman’s allegations were “crazy, absurd, illogical, irrational, ridiculous, unconstitutional”, although unconfirmed reports suggest that Nisman’s allegations were based on phone taps he examined covering conversations dating back to 2012 .
This is what the Argentine authorities have declared so far: . Nisman was found with a bullet entry-wound on the right side of his head, lying next to a .22 calibre handgun and a shell casing. His body was found inside the bathroom and blocking the door, which was locked from the inside and didn’t appear to be forced . Nisman’s security guards alerted his mother on Sunday afternoon that he was not answering his front door or phone, and the Sunday papers were still on his doorstep, uncollected.  Nisman’s mother found the door to his flat locked from the inside and had to get a locksmith to open it. She found her son’s body and called the police.
Officials have suggested he committed suicide, the implication being that Nisman suffered from some mental instability that cracked under pressure of events with a preliminary autopsy showing no signs of third party involvement nor indeed clear evidence that he pulled the trigger. Friends and family suspect that he was the victim of assassination or induced suicide.
I asked some usually well informed friend in Buenos Aires what he thought had happened. He suggested that at the very least the crime scene had been mishandled with anonymous government officials first to arrive on the scene(after the mother) and only belatedly an investigating judge getting involved.
Meanwhile I note an interesting piece in today’s The Times of Israel by David Horovitz who is adamant that Nisman’s death was no suicide having spoken to the Argentinian-born Israeli author Gustavo Perednik, who wrote a book last year about the AMIA case — “To Kill Without A Trace”, and was himself “a good friend of Nisman’s.”
Perednik told Horovitz that he had been in constant contact with Nisman although had last met with him in Buenos Aires a month ago. The author described Nisman, according to Horovitz’s account, as a “ a tennis-playing optimist who loved and enjoyed life, who spoke of his separation from his long-term partner a year ago as a “liberation,” and who was utterly dedicated to his work… a man who firmly shrugged off death threats, was balanced, and focused, and decent, and fine.”
Another Buenos Aies friend I talked to today said that Nisman had voluntarily cut short his local summer holidays and left a shopping list for his maid to attend on Monday-why would he have done that if he was going to kill himself the day before?
But there are more questions than answers so far and some of them pointing to conflicting conclusions. Nisman himself is not easily categorised , having originally been appointed (and seemingly trusted) by Fernandez’s late husband Nestor to clear up the AMIA case once and for all back in 2006 after previous judicial cover-ups. If there was one or more outside intruders, why was the door to the flat and the bathroom door locked from the inside? Nisman had ten body guards responsible for his protection. Why were none of them apparently anywhere near where the body was found i.e. inside the flat. Why are there no initial reports from any of the body guards that they saw a third party approaching the flat?
One of the conspiracy theories is that Nisman’s death-whoever was responsible-forms part of an unresolved infighting between two factions inside Argentina’s main intelligence agency, the Secretary of Intelligence-one in favour of Iran, the other,which had its main figure sacked a month ago, linked to hardline elements of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, resolute in blaming Tehran. There are there in Argentina and outside who believe that it was Syria not Iran who was involved in the AMIA attack.
Argentine politics has never been short of conspiracy theories or true stories of brutal illegality, not to mention terrorism, both state and non-state- but it’s been some time since the death of an individual could contribute to a terrible sense of uncertainty and deja-vue.
However history does not repeat itself and the thousands who protested Nisman’s death in the streets of Buenos Aires and the sense outrage expressed publicly by opposition politicians and sectors of the media suggests that if this was murder, those responsible will not easily get away with it. For now the onus is clearly on the government to prove its innocence beyond any reasonable doubt, not just for its own credibility but Argentina’s reputation as a credible state.