Buenos Aires -
The late Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman did not commit suicide or die in an accident but was killed, his ex-wife said on Thursday, citing an expert investigation she commissioned.
“Nisman was killed, and his death is an assassination of unprecedented proportions that deserves answers from the country's institutions,” said Sandra Arroyo, who is a judge and the mother of two daughters she and Nisman had together.
The conclusions were reached by a team of experts hired by the family to investigate Nisman's death.
Nisman was found dead on January 18 in his Buenos Aires apartment with a handgun and a bullet casing beside his body.
The case is under investigation. Argentinian authorities initially appeared to regard the incident as a suicide, but Fernandez de Kirchner said just a few days after Nisman's death that she was “convinced” he had not committed suicide and that it was part of a plot to harm her government.
Four days before his death Nisman filed a complaint in which he accused Fernandez de Kirchner and several of her aides of covering up Iran's alleged involvement in an attack on a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people in 1994.
Public prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita formally filed charges against Fernandez de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman on February 13 based on Nisman's complaint.
Last week, Federal Judge Daniel Rafecas ruled that the charges were not adequately founded and dismissed them “for lack of a crime.” Rafecas said neither of the two criminal hypotheses presented by Pollicita “minimally stand at all.”
Pollicita appealed the ruling on Wednesday.
The government has consistently and staunchly denied the allegations and insisted there is no evidence “not even circumstantial in nature” that the president or her aides committed any crimes.
Earlier this month, Timerman told the Washington Post in an interview that the 2013 deal with Iran sought only to get over legal hurdles related to putting the suspects on trial, although it later fell through.
Timerman said Argentina had tried to convince the government of Iran to allow the judge investigating the bombing to go to Tehran to interview suspects.
Critics have long suspected the dealings were actually about an illegal and secret arrangement that would have allowed Argentina to export agricultural produce to Iran and import Iranian oil in exchange for having the charges dropped.
Sapa-dpa