Alberto Nisman, the Argentine prosecutor who last week accused President Cristina Fernandez of trying to whitewash Argentina's worst ever bombing, was found dead in his apartment on Monday morning.
Nisman, the state prosecutor investigating the 1994 blast at a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people, said last Wednesday that Fernandez had opened a secret back channel to a group of Iranians suspected of planting the bomb. He had said the scheme intended to clear the suspects so Argentina could start swapping grains for much-needed oil from Iran.
Argentine news media reported that Nisman was found shot dead in his bathtub in his flat in the luxurious Buenos Aires district of Puerto Madero. A police official said a weapon had been found, and the cause of the death was still being investigated, but first signs were pointing towards a suicide.
Nisman had been due to appear in front of lawmakers on Monday afternoon to explain his accusations, which said that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner tried to whitewash Iran's involvement in the 1994 terror attack against the headquarters of the Jewish umbrella bodies AMIA and DAIA in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people were killed and hundreds wounded.
Over the past years, the prosecutor had presented detailed evidence against several Iranian officials, including then-President Rafsandjani, and accused Tehran of masterminding the bombing.
In 2013, Fernández and her Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman negotiated a memorandum of understanding with Tehran to set up a "truth commission" with Iran to jointly investigate the bombing. She said at the time that the pact would reactivate the probe, but Israel and Jewish groups said it threatened to derail criminal prosecution of the case. The truth commission pact was later struck down by an Argentine court.
Nisman had said the truth commission was intended to help get Interpol 'red notices' for the arrest of the accused Iranians dropped as a step toward normalizing bilateral trade relations.
