Discussion: Murdered Prosecutor Had Drafted Warrant To Arrest Argentina's President

Discussion for article #232829

"Now investigators say they found a drafted arrest warrant for Kirchner and other top Argentinian officials “in the garbage at Nisman’s apartment.”

Hmmmmmmm

Murder?

It has not been determined whether murder or suicide. He was found with a gunshot to the head in an apartment locked from the inside.

The Nation has an interesting take:

Nisman’s death is classic black-bag baroque. It involves spies, Cold War intelligence agencies, Israel, Syria, Iran, oil politics, and, of course, the CIA and Mossad. But before going in to the deals, I want to point out its eerie similarity to another bizarre political death, in Guatemala of Rodrigo Rosenberg in 2009.

Rosenberg, just before he was murdered, made a video in which he accused the country’s then left-of-center president, Álvaro Colom, of having killed him because he had evidence of corruption. Where Nisman reportedly predicted his own death (“I might get out of this dead"), Rosenberg, in his video, said “if you are hearing or seeing this message it means that I’ve been murdered by President Álvaro Colom.”

Rosenberg then paid assassins to kill him.

In any case, it is not good reporting to call this murder. The New York Times does not call this murder. The case has not been made.

On edit:

The Guardian:

Investigators have yet to determine whether the killing was suicide or murder.

Nisman had just borrowed the gun which killed him.

The Telegraph

The Argentinian prosecutor was found dead with a bullet through his head but who pulled the trigger is not clear.

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Argentinians are frequently described as leaving in a different reality… this kind of crazy stuff just confirms it. No wonder Buenos Aires has the largest number.of shrinks per capita.

I have been following this very interesting story being carried by Ian Masters on our local far left station KPFK. I am surprised this is the first I have seen it (I may be wrong) on TPM. From what I have heard it sounds more and more like he was murdered

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Underscoring the tension surrounding the death of Mr. Nisman, who was buried at a Jewish cemetery last week, anti-Semitic posters began appearing in central Buenos Aires this week. They read: “The good Jew is the dead Jew. The good Jew is Nisman.”

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Initial reports said the door was locked from the inside. A locksmith who helped the police gain access to the apartment later came out and said, no, the door was locked and then pushed or pulled closed. There were keys in the lock inside, but the door was locked before it was closed.

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Maybe more entranceways…

A locksmith has said the service door was not fully locked at the apartment where a crusading Argentinian prosecutor was found shot dead, and investigators have revealed the existence of a previously unknown entry, as more questions arose over the death of the man who had accused the president of a cover-up in a terrorist car bombing. Guardian

But its not clear whether this is murder or suicide.

There are reasons to suspect suicide. Nisman was shot from a gun he had just borrowed.

Nisman had been working on this case ten years and there were signs he was losing.

But many analysts said Nisman’s case was flawed because it relied too heavily on intelligence from wiretaps and appeared to have been contradicted by events. Argentina has not boosted trade with Iran and the former head of Interpol has denied that its government has ever requested the lifting of “red notice” warrants against Iranian officials who were allegedly involved in the bombing.The Guardian

As my earlier Nation article shows, strange things can happen. People can try to advance their cause by extraordinary means - even at the cost of their lives.

Read the New Yorker piece about an eerily similar case which turned out to be suicide.

At this point it is not good reporting to call this murder.

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Read all the stories first Martin.

wouldn’t the killer have taken these rather than put them in the garbage? Or wouldn’t they have checked the apartment to take any documents like these? Perhaps it’s just too hard to find good contract killers these days?

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The assertion is that someone went through all of the trouble to kill him and make it look like a suicide, but they somehow forgot to actually remove the most dangerous incriminating bits from the scene? That’s some oddly sloppy work.

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It’s not yet established if it was murder or not, but it’s likewise not established that the door was locked from the inside, as you assert (in a way that seems to tacitly argue it was suicide).

Examiners also said that the gun was fired at least 15cms away from Nisman’s head, which would also seem to contradict suicide, just not definitively.

Meanwhile Argentine society, including the President, all are referring to this as a murder. So while it’s not established as such, those closer to the case find that the more likely answer.

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That’s the thing that seemed odd to me – and lends credence to @MartinHeldt’s argument. I’ve read nothing about this case, or that crazy earlier one, and have no opinion one way or the other; but it sure is intriguing.

I’m only sure of one thing here, and that is that at this point it is inappropriate to state the cause of death as murder in a news headline.

So who are the investigators? So many possible choices for this one, all ugly.

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I’m really concerned about the timing of this. As we all know, Netanyahu is pushing hard to interfere in the Iran nuclear negotiations and would like to see that process stopped. Just a few weeks ago we had the Israeli attack that killed the Iranian general near Quinetra Syria, also a move that increased tensions with Iran. Now this death comes right in the midst of the Iran sanctions argument again pointing fingers at Iran.

I do agree with those pointing out the coincidence that the arrest paperwork for the Argentine president, drawn up by Nisman, were found in the garbage in the apartment.

Surely no assassin from the presidents side would place such key evidence where it would surely be found.

Likewise, why write a 26 page indictment and then toss it in the trash? To have it found is a likely answer. Another factor making it all the more likely that the prosecutor placed the document in the garbage himself is the timing. Think of it, this key piece of evidence just happens to get written up and then pitched into the garbage just before the death. We’re looking at about a one week window for this document before its compost in a landfil. Thats a small timeframe, making it quite a coincidence.

The late prosecutor was Jewish. He may have felt that this was a patriotic sacrifice he had to make. I don’t know, but similar things have happened before.

There are lots of indications that the investigation was in trouble.

Horacio Verbitsky, the president of the country’s leading human-rights group, the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, pointed out to me that only two pages of Nisman’s nearly three-hundred-page report concern the legal basis of the criminal charges against the President, which is striking considering the magnitude of the accusations.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/happened-alberto-nisman

Interpol too

Former Secretary General of the Interpol Roland Noble said special prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s accusations against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s administration over the 1994 AMIA Jewish centre bombing are “false” and he confirmed that “no member of the Argentine government” has ever asked Interpol to revoke the Red Notices against Iranian officials, as Nisman denounced.

“What prosecutor (Alberto) Nisman says is false. No member of the Argentine government has ever asked us to revoke the Red Notices against the Iranian officials,” Noble said,

Way too soon to call this murder.

What on earth does that mean?

The prosecutor may have began to take this personally and, similar to the story I linked to from the Nation, offered up his own life to make it look like murder. Nisman could be a martyr in this regards.

We don’t know at this point. We do know that there were clear signs that his ten year investigation was not progressing well.

His patriotic duty to Argentina? To Israel?? Because Jews are by definition loyal to Israel?

Leaving aside that weirdness, He didn’t do a particularity good job of making it look like murder, unlike the case in Guatamala where the guy supposedly had someone attack him in broad daylight. (and after having read that story, the guy was out for personal revenge, how is that similar in this case).

I think someone cautioning others not to call it murder, shouldn’t be trafficking in even more outlandish speculation.

Not by definition, no. But it is a distinct possibility that he felt a loyalty to Israel.

Its not been determined to be murder. The article this was based on certainly made that clear. TPM’s headline is misleading.