I'm shocked, just shocked, to hear this
Shavua tov, a good week to everyone.
This should surprise no one.
Maybe Obama can hire Iran to come after Rudy Giuliani? (And don't get me wrong - I love Giuliani).
Labels: Alberto Nisman, AMIA truck bombing, Argentina, Barack Hussein Obama, Iranian nuclear threat, murder
Kirchner: 'Nisman was murdered to frame me'
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner now admits that the death of AMIA terror bombing investigator Alberto Nisman was not a suicide. But now Kirchner claims that
Nisman was murdered to frame her.
The government says two key witnesses in Nisman's case against the president had been falsely presented to him as state intelligence agents.
Fernandez said the deception discredited Nisman's charges against her and points to a conspiracy to smear her name.
"They used him while he was alive and then they needed him dead," she said in an open letter to the country, adding that his death was "sad and terrible".
She did not say who killed him and no one has been arrested in the case, which has shocked Argentines. Social media networks are seething with conspiracy theories, some pointing at Fernandez and her government.
Thousands took to the streets this week to protest the slow pace of justice for the victims of the bombing and demanding answers to the questions around Nisman's death.
Fernandez again defended herself in a Facebook post on Thursday.
"Nisman's accusation not only collapses, but becomes a real political and legal scandal ... That's the key. Prosecutor Nisman did not know that the men identified as intelligence agents were in fact not," she said.
"The spies who were not spies. The questions that turned into certainties. The suicide that I am now convinced was not a suicide."
But there are a lot of suspicious things happening here. One of them is the fact that
Nisman's apartment has a back door that was unlocked - contradicting earlier reports that Nisman's apartment was locked from the inside. The existence of a third door only rouses more suspicions.
Lead prosecutor Viviana Fein said there was no evidence
of anyone else involved in the death, but said Nisman left no suicide
note. A test of his hand showed no residue of gunpowder, though she said
that may have been due to the small caliber of the gun. The fact that
national Security Secretary Sergio Berni quickly turned up in the
apartment also fed doubts.
Moreover, the locksmith who opened the back door to
give investigators access to the home where Nisman was found dead said
it was barely closed, raising questions about whether a killer might
have entered or exited what was earlier described as a 13th-story
apartment locked from the inside.
After testifying to investigators, the man who gave
his name only as Walter said he was able to quickly open the door with a
hook. He added, "If someone entered or not, I don't know."
The official news agency Telam, meanwhile, said
investigators had found a third access to the home, a narrow passage
holding air conditioning equipment that connects to a neighboring
apartment occupied by an unidentified foreigner. They were investigating
a seemingly recent footprint and fingerprint found inside.
Opposition politicians have
denounced Kirchner's claim that Nisman was murdered to frame her.
Opposition leaders denounced Kirchner's statements as an opportunistic about-face.
"It's very serious. To go from supporting the thesis of a suicide, to an assassination, she must assume the consequences," said Senator Ernesto Sanz, a member of the opposition.
Another Kirchner opponent, deputy Francisco de Narvaez, expressed outrage that Kirchner would take a position on such a sensitive matter while an investigation was underway.
"You do not have the right to trample on the independence of the judiciary in this tragedy. I ask you to stop acting like an adolescent trying to gain influence through your Facebook account," he said.
I would bet on Kirchner being involved. The question is how to prove it.
Labels: Alberto Nisman, AMIA truck bombing, Argentina, Buenos Aires, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Hezbullah, Iran, Islamic terrorism
Alberto Nisman did not commit suicide and the AMIA bombing was not 'unsolved'
David Horovitz is certain that Argentinian prosecutor Alberto Nisman did not commit suicide and that the AMIA bombing is not 'unsolved.' We all know who was behind it:
Iran and Hezbullah.
Perednik despairs at the naivete of anyone
prepared to countenance that a prosecutor who has spent a decade heading
a 30-strong team investigating the worst terror attack ever committed
in Argentina; who has identified the Iranian leaders who ordered it and
had them placed on Interpol watch lists; who has traced and named the
Hezbollah terrorists who carried out the bombing; who has exposed Iran’s
still-active terror networks in South America; and who was about to
detail the alleged efforts of Argentinian President Cristina Fernández
and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman to whitewash Iran’s role — that
this man would choose to take his own life just a few hours before
giving his testimony to a Congressional hearing.
But Nisman was found dead by “self-inflicted”
bullet wound in a locked apartment with no sign of forced entry, the
Argentinian authorities say? Perednik is succinct and withering about
both motivation and capability: Does anyone doubt that a government
capable of whitewashing Iran is capable of producing a dead prosecutor
in a locked apartment? he asks. “In our last conversation, Nisman told
me that his evidence would either force [those top Argentinian leaders]
to flee or send them to jail. He told me, ‘I’m going to put them in
jail.'” Sunday was their last chance to stop him.
...
As I detailed Monday,
he traced the orchestration of the bombing all the way back to the
August 1993 meeting of Iran’s leadership at which it was commissioned,
and identified the key conspirators to the satisfaction of Interpol. We
know who ordered the bombing — an Iranian government committee headed by
supreme leader Ali Khamenei and then president Hashemi Rafsanjani. We
know who arranged it — the late and unlamented Hezbollah terror chief
Imad Mughniyeh. And we know all about Ibrahim Berro, the suicide bomber
who drove the explosives-filled Renault Trafic van into the building on
July 18, 1994, killing 85 innocents. All thanks to Alberto Nisman.
Solving the case, I should note, is not the same as bringing the
culprits to justice. Despite Nisman’s efforts, the Iranian conspirators
have not been indicted, tried and jailed — in good part, he was about to
allege, because of Fernández’s duplicity. If so, this is a supreme and
terrible irony, given that it was her own late husband, Nestor Kirchner,
horrified by years of flawed and skewed and politicized investigation
of the AMIA attack, who appointed Nisman a decade ago precisely to get
to the truth and air it.
...
Perednik accurately sees in the killing of
Alberto Nisman a “devastating blow” to justice, the death of “a symbol
of pure-hearted dedication to the truth, a world destroyed, and a
victory for the evil-doers.”
He does not, however, believe the entire
battle is necessarily lost. He names Jaime Stiusso, a former top officer
in Argentina’s Secretariat of Intelligence, S.I., who was fired by
Fernández, as the official most capable both of getting to the bottom of
Nisman’s killing and of marshaling and producing the evidence,
including allegedly incriminating tape recordings, that Nisman had been
about to present.
More widely, he’s encouraged by the sight of
thousands of Argentinian demonstrators taking to the streets Monday to
protest Nisman’s death and demand justice. Some of them, he notes, were
carrying placards declaring “I am Nisman.” Others were carrying placards
proclaiming, “Cristina Killer.”
Read the whole thing. Argentina has changed an awful lot since the 1970's. Kirchner may not get away with this.
Labels: Alberto Nisman, AMIA truck bombing, Argentina, Buenos Aires, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Hezbullah, Iran, Islamic terrorism
Judge orders materials in AMIA case seized
The judge investigating Iranian involvement in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires has ordered the
seizure of all evidence in light of Sunday night's apparent murder of prosecutor Alberto Nisman.
Local newspaper Perfil reported that
[Judge Ariel] Lijo ordered the seizure of all documentation referred to in the
complaint, as well as a number of disks reportedly containing recordings
of wiretaps that were provided to Nisman, and which allegedly include
direct communications between Iranian and Argentine officials over the
investigation into the AMIA bombing, which Nisman assumed responsibility
for in 2006.
Lijo’s announcement came as the initial findings of the autopsy into Nisman’s death were released. According to La Nacion, the bullet which took Nisman’s life entered through his temple.
Viviana Fein, who is in charge of the investigation into Nisman’s
death, also said that there was no evidence to indicate that the door to
Nisman’s residence had been forced open.
In addition to his complaint,
Nisman had ordered the freezing of assets worth some $23 million
belonging to Fernández de Kirchner, Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman,
and other officials. These and similar details have led to a flurry of
speculation among Argentinian politicians and journalists that foul play
was involved in his death.
Elisa Carrio, leader of the
Civic Coalition, an opposition party, bluntly called Nisman’s death “an
assassination,” saying she did not accept that it was a suicide.
Meanwhile, the Argentine government has announced that
Alberto Adrián Gentili will replace Nisman at the head of the AMIA
bombing investigation. Gentili, who is regarded as close to the
government, was removed from a 2008 investigation
into narcotics trafficking after authorizing intelligence activities
against individuals with no prior record of involvement in the drugs
trade. In 2012, he was reinstated as a Prosecutor by Alejandra Gils
Carbo, Argentina’s Prosecutor-General.
I trust that Gentili will be a lot more cooperative than Nisman was....
Labels: Alberto Nisman, AMIA truck bombing, Argentina, Buenos Aires, Hezbullah, Iran, Islamic terrorism
Oh my: AMIA prosecutor murdered hours before he was to testify on government coverup?
Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor in the 1994 suicide bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, was
found dead in his apartment on Sunday night, hours before he was to testify that Argentine President Cristina Kirchner had covered up Iranian involvement in the suicide bombing.
Nisman had filed a 300-page complaint naming Fernández, Timerman and
others of seeking to “erase” Iran’s role in the bombing at the AMIA
community center offices in which 85 people were killed. He had said
he wanted to question the president and other officials whom he claimed
were involved in the cover-up.
Nisman claimed that the president had decided
to “not incriminate” former senior Iranian officials for their roles in
planning the bombing, and instead has sought a rapprochement with
Tehran, “establishing trade relations to mitigate Argentina’s severe
energy crisis,” the Buenos Aires Herald reported.
When her agreement with Iran was challenged in
the Argentinean courts, “and here is the criminal (aspect), the
president ordered to divert the investigation, abandoning years of a
legitimate demand of justice, and sought to free the Iranians imputed
(in the case) from all suspicions, contradicting their proven ties with
the attack.
“The president and her foreign minister took
the criminal decision to fabricate Iran’s innocence to sate Argentina’s
commercial, political and geopolitical interests,” the newspaper quoted
Nisman as alleging.
Last May, an Argentine court declared
unconstitutional an agreement Between the Argentinian government and
Iran to jointly probe the 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish
center. The agreement had been approved in 2013 by Argentina’s congress,
at the request of the executive branch. Nisman consistently argued that
the agreement constituted “undue interference of the executive branch
in the exclusive sphere of the judiciary.”
Since 2006, Argentine courts have demanded the
extradition of eight Iranians, including former president Akbar Hashemi
Rafsanjani, former defense minister Ahmad Vahidi and Mohsen Rabbani,
Iran’s former cultural attache in Buenos Aires, over their alleged
involvement in the bombing.
Police initially called Nisman's death a suicide. I don't believe that and you shouldn't either. Nisman long-claimed that
Iran was behind the AMIA attack and believed that Argentina was
not the only Latin American country that Iran had infiltrated. Kirchner and Timmerman have been trying for a long time to
have the charges dropped in order to improve relations with Iran.
Nisman was murdered. He was murdered by the Iranians or by someone acting on their behalf. The only question is whether Kirchner and Timmerman were involved directly as well.
Labels: Alberto Nisman, AMIA truck bombing, Argentina, Buenos Aires, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Hezbullah, Iran, Islamic terrorism
