BUENOS
AIRES — Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor whose mysterious death has
gripped Argentina, had drafted a request for the arrest of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner,
accusing her of trying to shield Iranian officials from responsibility
in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center here, the lead investigator into
his death said Tuesday.
The 26-page document,
which was found in the garbage at Mr. Nisman’s apartment, also
requested the arrest of Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister.
Both Mrs. Kirchner and Mr. Timerman have repeatedly denied Mr. Nisman’s
accusation that they tried to reach a secret deal with Iran to lift international arrest warrants for Iranian officials wanted in connection with the bombing.
The
new revelation that Mr. Nisman had drafted arrest requests for
arresting the president and the foreign minister illustrates the
heightened tensions between the prosecutor and the government before he was found dead
on Jan. 18 at his apartment with a gunshot wound to his head. He had
been scheduled the next day to provide details before Congress about his
accusations against Mrs. Kirchner.
“It
would have provoked a crisis without precedents in Argentina,” said
Sergio Berensztein, a political analyst, about the impact of the arrest
requests if they had been issued. He noted that previous legal cases had
shaken Argentina’s political establishment, but he emphasized that this
case involved a request to arrest a sitting president.
“It would have been a scandal on a level previously unseen,” Mr. Berensztein said.
Mrs.
Kirchner, who is on a visit to China, issued a stream of updates on
Twitter about strengthening ties between Buenos Aires and Beijing but
did not comment immediately on the confirmation that Mr. Nisman had
considered seeking her arrest. She and the foreign minister have
previously pointed to statements by Interpol’s former director that the Argentine government did not lobby it to lift the Iranian arrest warrants.
The
draft of the arrest requests was not included in the 289-page criminal
complaint against Mrs. Kirchner, the foreign minister and prominent
supporters of the president that Mr. Nisman filed before his death. Mr.
Nisman accused them of derailing his decade-long investigation into the
1994 bombing of the Argentina Israelite Mutual Association, commonly
called AMIA, which left 85 people dead.
In
his criminal complaint, Mr. Nisman charged Mrs. Kirchner and a group of
her supporters with covering up a secret outreach effort to the
Iranians, describing it as an attempt to derail his investigation, and
he asked for their assets to be frozen.
Normally,
a prosecutor requests an arrest out of concern that the people charged
with crimes will try to corrupt the investigation or flee the country,
according to Susana Ciruzzi, a professor of criminal law at the
University of Buenos Aires who knew Mr. Nisman.
But
in this case, some legal experts suspect that Mr. Nisman decided
against requesting the arrest of Mrs. Kirchner because such a move would
have been viewed as a political attack on the president in a case that
has already polarized the nation.
Moreover,
Mrs. Kirchner and Mr. Timerman have immunity as members of the
executive branch. They could have been arrested only if a judge handling
the case were to authorize a political trial similar to an impeachment
process and ask Congress to lift their immunity, Ms. Ciruzzi said.
Two
judges have refused to take the case put forward by Mr. Nisman, raising
the possibility that his criminal complaint could languish in
Argentina’s legal system if another judge is not found to continue it. A
federal chamber is expected to decide who should take the case.
Mrs. Kirchner and senior officials have disputed Mr. Nisman’s findings, contending that agents from Argentina’s premier intelligence services were involved
in preparing his complaint. In the uproar around the prosecutor’s
death, Mrs. Kirchner announced a plan last week to overhaul the
intelligence agency, after a purge of its leadership in December.
As
the investigation into Mr. Nisman’s death continues, theories are
swirling in Argentina about whether it was a suicide or a killing. Mrs.
Kirchner has suggested that his death was part of a plot to tarnish her
government.
Viviana
Fein, the prosecutor investigating Mr. Nisman’s death, said Tuesday
morning that Mr. Nisman had prepared the draft of the request for the
president’s arrest. Confusion about the document emerged when Ms. Fein
at first denied its existence, after the newspaper Clarín published an
article on Sunday about the draft.
Mrs.
Kirchner’s cabinet chief, Jorge Capitanich, tore up the article before
reporters on Monday. But then Ms. Fein corrected her earlier statement
and confirmed the existence of the draft, which Clarín said was prepared
in June 2014, more than six months before Mr. Nisman went public with
his accusations against the president.
“The
words I should have used are, ‘It’s evident that there was a draft,’ ”
Ms. Fein said in comments broadcast on Argentine radio.
After
the confusion, Ms. Fein insisted she was not being pressured by Mrs.
Kirchner’s government over the handling of the investigation.
“I do not receive pressure from the government or anyone,” she said. “I am independent.”
At the same time, Ms. Fein said Tuesday that she would be taking a vacation, from Feb. 18 to March 5.
“It’s
only 10 working days, and it’s not going to alter the course of the
investigation,” Ricardo Sáenz, Ms Fein’s immediate superior, told local
radio. Two prosecutors will replace Ms. Fein during her vacation, he
said.
Legal
experts emphasized that the draft found in Mr. Nisman’s apartment was
not valid in an Argentine court of law, and needed more than just the
prosecutor’s wishes to move forward in the legal system.
“It
is not signed; it is a draft,” said María del Carmen Besteiro, head of
the Buenos Aires Association of Lawyers. “Nisman was a prosecutor. The
one who has to make the accusation and who has to decide it is a judge.”
Underscoring the tensions surrounding the death of Mr. Nisman, who was buried at a Jewish cemetery last week, anti-Semitic posters began appearing in central Buenos Aires this week.
“The good Jew is the dead Jew,” the posters read. “The good Jew is Nisman.”
Julio
Schlosser, the president of the Delegation of Argentine Jewish
Associations, said, “These posters represent a current of anti-Semitism
seeking to insult the prosecutor Nisman, who worked and dedicated his
life to the AMIA case.” He added, “It is also a provocation to the
Jewish community.”
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