LAST week Alberto Nisman, a federal prosecutor, made national and international headlines when he accused Argentina’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, of attempting to cover up Iran’s involvement in the country’s deadliest-ever terrorist attack. Late on January 18th he was found dead in his bathroom with a gun by his side. Whatever its cause, this tragic turn to a sensational case will have big political implications.
Mr Nisman (pictured) was the chief investigator of the 1994 bombing of AMIA, a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires, which killed 86 people (including the terrorist) and injured hundreds. In a 300-page document filed with a court on January 14th he alleged that Ms Fernández, the foreign minister, Héctor Timerman, and others had opened up backchannel negotiations with Iran, whose officials are suspected of organising the attack. The idea was to reach an agreement clearing the Iranian suspects in return for a deal under which Argentina could swap grain for badly needed oil. Mr Nisman was found dead just hours before he was due to present his findings in a closed hearing before Congress’s criminal-affairs committee.
Iran
Argentina’s Jewish community, the world’s seventh largest, has long been angry about the failure to find and prosecute the murderers. Its view, seconded by the state of Israel and by Argentine prosecutors, is that Iran planned the attack and that Hizbullah, a Lebanon-based Shia militia-cum-political party, carried it out.
Argentine Jews greeted an agreement in 2013 between Argentina and Iran to set up a “truth commission” to get to the bottom of the crime—the product of Ms Fernández’s secret talks, alleged Mr Nisman—with fury. For murky reasons, the deal fell apart. Ms Fernández’s spokesman dismissed the prosecutor’s allegations as “ridiculous” and Mr Timerman denied them.
Mr Nisman’s death throws his case against the government into confusion and politics into turmoil. Since filing his allegations he had been nervous. He talked of beefing up his security detail and reportedly said to associates, “I’m playing with my life here.”
But the conditions in which his body was found seem at first glance to point toward suicide rather than toward murder. His mother, concerned that her son had not returned messages, visited his apartment with a police detail on January 18th. They found the front door locked from the inside and Mr Nisman’s body in the bathroom beside a 22mm calibre pistol and a bullet casing. Papers related to his congressional meeting were unfurled on his desk. The police investigator told the press throng outside the building that she would venture no hypothesis. “I can’t tell if this was a suicide or not,” she said. “I ask you to be prudent.” No suicide note was found.
If it turns out to be suicide, the consequences, while grave, will not be catastrophic. A debate would begin about whether to press ahead with Mr Nisman’s investigation, says Sergio Berensztein, a political analyst. If it is murder, on the other hand, the hunt for culprits could trigger political and social chaos, he believes.
So far, most politicians are treading cautiously. Ms Fernández, an inveterate tweeter, has stayed mum. The Jewish community, however, has not. Julio Schlosser, head of the Delegation of Argentine-Jewish Associations, pronounced January 19th a day of mourning for a man he believes was making progress on the case. In a radio interview he declared that “today the bomb from the AMIA case went off again.”