The death of a prosecutor investigating the bombing of a Jewish community center was not a suicide, as was initially reported, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez said on Thursday.
Alberto Nisman, lead investigator into the 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish center that killed 85 people, was found dead in his apartment late Sunday, a 22 caliber pistol by his side.
He had accused Fernandez of trying to derail his investigation into the bombing and was due to present his case to Congress hours later on Monday, Reuters reported.
The government says two men who Nisman believed were deeply involved in the alleged cover-up of the 1994 attack 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 a post, adding that his death was “sad and terrible.”
She did not say who killed him and no one has been arrested in the case. Thousands took to the streets to protest the pace of justice for the victims of the bombing and demanding answers to the questions around Nisman’s death.
With the economy shrinking and inflation in the double digits, the case has further weakened Fernandez’s popularity and is expected to help pro-market opposition candidates like Buenos Aires Mayor Mauricio Macri and congressman Sergio Massa in the presidential election in October.
Fernandez has been in office for seven years but is barred from running for a third consecutive term. Massa and Macri have criticized her for not going on television to try to calm nerves frayed by the scandal.
