After a federal prosecutor was found dead, his presumed suicide exposed a true international operation that may have involved Argentine authorities as high as the president. The probe may also signal the beginning of a “clean hands” new start for the country “at the end of the world.”
Former Iranian government members, the Interpol, Argentina’s presidency and the Lebanese Hezbollah, all play a role in the investigation that landed also at the United Nations and on the desk of John Kerry, the US Secretary of State. At stake are the Argentine justice and justice for the 85 victims of a terrorist attack.
Rewind to the first chapter: Iran’s involvement of in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires. “The Argentine Justice [of every grade, including the Supreme Court],” wrote federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman who died in unexplained circumstances, “established that the decision to commit an attack on AMIA’s facility, the implementation of the attack, and the entrusting of its execution to the Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist organization lay with the highest Iranian authorities.”
The second chapter in January 2015 concerns the last part of the probe by Mr. Nisman. In recent years he had been investigating why the condemned perpetrators had not been arrested, despite Interpol’s red notices. He had come to the conclusion that the Argentine government had covered up Iran’s role in the attack, and was about to bring formal charges against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.
He did not get to that. Four days after he filed a report accusing Ms. Fernández, and the day before his testimony before Congress, on January 18, Nisman, who feared already for the safety of his daughters, was found dead in his apartment in upmarket neighborhood Puerto Madero in Buenos Aires. His protection officers presented contradicting versions of the circumstances.
It would take days to read the 290 pages of the probe, and many more to listen to wiretaps — all posted over the Internet —, which provide evidence that the president and his entourage schemed to absolve the responsibility of Iranian officials in the worst terrorist attack suffered by Argentina.
Prosecutors in Buenos Aires know the probe well, and this gets us to the third chapter. Justices, among which Nisman’s wife, do not buy the suicide version, and are now on a war footing.
On February 11, the judge who took over the investigation, Gerardo Pollicita, formally indicted the presidenta. He was assigned also close protection.
Buenos Aires is home to the fourth biggest Jewish community in the world. In 1992 a suicide car bomb killed 29 people at the Israeli embassy. In 1994, a van exploded in front of one of the Jewish organizations in the city killing 85. Investigations led to an Iranian plot. Argentine justice urged again and again the capture and extradition of former government members of the Islamic Republic of Iran: president Ali Rafsanjani; the ministers of Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Defense, Ali Velayati, Ali Fallahijan and Ahmad Vahidi; former head of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rezai; and four diplomats in, among which the ambassador to Argentina.
Efforts, like the attempt of President Kirchner, the passed husband of Cristina Fernández, to obtain support from the United Nations, did not produce results. Kirchner rejected political negotiations with Iran, considering the events strictly criminal.
Then came years of energy scarcity. Tehran proposed Buenos Aires negotiations. During an official visit to the UAE, Kuwait and Qatar in January 2011, Argentine Foreign Minister, Héctor Timerman, quit the official delegation that included the President, and met his Syrian peer Walid Al -Mohalem and President Bashar Al-Assad. Through them, he then met Iranian Foreign Minister, Akbar Salehi on behalf of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. At the summit in Aleppo, Kirchner’s envoy agreed to Tehran’s conditions. In exchange for trade relations, Argentina would seek a lift of Interpol red notices on the accused five former senior officials.
These meetings, the two-years negotiations that took place in Caracas, Beirut and other Gulf areas, and Timerman’ meeting with the Secretary General of Interpol in Lyon, France, were kept secret to Argentines, until the scoops of two journalists, Eliaschev and Levinas. The former had learned about from the Iranian press, the latter from Israeli sources. Timerman denied, but then, on September 24, 2013, at the 68th General Assembly of the United Nations, Argentina made the first open move to support Iran. The Israeli-Argentine associations had asked that the delegation left the hall during Ahmadinejad’s speech, but Ambassador Arguello stayed as Cristina Fernández had requested.
In his reconstruction, Nisman states that he considered criminal action only the secret negotiations, not so attempts to re-establish diplomatic and trade relations.
The Nisman case is a breakthrough in the last 21 years of Peronism. It divided the Jewish Argentine community between pro-Peronism Jews and the others. It definitely damaged Peronism. In the next 10 months leading to the end of the mandate, the government will be dealing with more than 300 corruption cases that involve senior officials, including the vice president and now the president. Although corruption has been endemic in Argentina for many decades, many observers agree that this probe could pose a devastating blow to the government and the nation’s institutions. It could be long before the trial comes to a conclusion, because corruption trials in Argentina last an average of 15 years.
Moreover, the Nisman probe also put against each other the state powers — the executive against the judiciary. That was apparent yesterday: while a massive rally called by the justices against impunity was entering Plaza de Mayo, the presidenta was attending a separate act 60 km away. In the center of Buenos Aires 400,000 people (police numbers) braved the rain to march in silence — many, according to some comments, after years of disenchantment for politics.
In the aftermath, two phrases are in all the papers: “crowd moving” and “deafening silence”. Even “clean hands” has crept into many editorials. Yesterday a strong public opinion has confirmed that wants to Argentina.
As we write, a rally of indignados for Nisman and against impunity, expected to be huge, is gathering. Constitutional law expert Roberto Gargarella responds to critics on the presence of justices: “In France, of the many public figures who rallied against the Charlie Hebdo massacre, whether you like them or not, none had to submit an ideological DNA to participate in”. Argentine justices are celebrating a colleague killed while investigating power, they say, and how the government generously funds the secret service’s “nest of vipers”.
February 18 is meant to be “cries, silence and tears” against impunity, but could mark also the beginning of a Mani pulite season in Argentina. “I am Nisman” is one of the slogans.
The Nisman case is a breakthrough in the last 21 years of Peronism. It divided the Jewish Argentine community between pro-Peronism Jews and the others. It definitely damaged Peronism. In the next 10 months leading to the end of the mandate, the government will be dealing with more than 300 corruption cases that involve senior officials, including the vice president and now the president. Although corruption has been endemic in Argentina for many decades, many observers agree that this probe could pose a devastating blow to the government and the nation’s institutions. It could be long before the trial comes to a conclusion, because corruption trials in Argentina last an average of 15 years.
Moreover, the Nisman probe also put against each other the state powers — the executive against the judiciary. That was apparent yesterday: while a massive rally called by the justices against impunity was entering Plaza de Mayo, the presidenta was attending a separate act 60 km away. In the center of Buenos Aires 400,000 people (police numbers) braved the rain to march in silence — many, according to comments, after years of disenchantment for politics.
In the aftermath, two phrases stand out in the morning papers: “a moving crowd” and “a deafening silence”. Also “mani pulite” (clean hands) crept into many editorials. Yesterday, a resolute part of the Argentine public opinion confirmed that that is what they want.
After a federal prosecutor was found dead, his presumed suicide exposed a true international operation that may have involved Argentine authorities as high as the president. The probe may also signal the beginning of a “clean hands” new start for the country “at the end of the world.”
