January 22, 2015
Cry for Alberto Nisman and for Argentina
By Professor Gregory Rose
As the world focuses on lone wolf terrorists and the atrocities of Islamic State, it fails to see far more powerful Iranian-sponsored terror striking down the rule of law in Latin America.
March against Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner for the death of the prosecutor Alberto Nisman. Photo by jmalievi | CC BY-NC 2.0.
Alberto Nisman, the Argentinian special prosecutor in a high profile terrorist bombing in Buenos Aires, was found dead this week in his apartment. He was an independent man who courageously blew the whistle on corruption in the Argentinian justice system.
Nisman, born 5 December 1963, died on Sunday night 18 January 2015, hours before he was due to give testimony the next day to a commission of the Argentinian Congress concerning a high profile bombing case, discussed below. He was due to explain his allegations, filed in an indictment the previous week, by presenting evidence of a criminal obstruction of justice by officials including President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner and the foreign minister Hector Timmerman.
The death presented as suicide: Nisman was found on the floor of his 13th floor apartment in Buenos Aires, in the bathroom against the door, with a .22 calibre pistol and empty shell casing nearby. Yet there were no gunpowder traces on his hands. He was a keen tennis player and an optimist despite death threats received the previous week. Some documentation for the evidence he was due to present at the Congress was prepared and on his desk and the next day’s shopping list for his house keeper. The 10 bodyguards assigned to him by the Argentina Federal Police were not on duty. His violent death seems suspiciously convenient, part of an ongoing conspiracy in Argentina and beyond to protect perpetrators of the bombing. It is reminiscent of other deaths of Argentine corruption investigators, commencing with that of Rodolfo Etchegoyen in 1990, whose murder was dressed as suicide.
The original bombing subject to investigation occurred two decades earlier, on 18 July 1994, when a 275 kg shaped charge (a directional bomb) made of fertiliser and fuel oil, was detonated in front of the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Centre. The bomb destroyed the building, killed 85 people and injured 300, the gravest terror attack in Latin American history. The subsequent investigation of the bombing, named for the century-old community centre – the Argentinian Mutual Israelite Association (AMIA) – has been futile, dogged by incompetence, controversy and alleged cover-up.
The bombing and its aftermath continues to demonstrate the extraordinary power of global criminal networks. It brings mafia style executions, smuggling and bribery together with state-sponsored political violence involving diplomatic protection, military expertise and security intelligence. The triple frontier area located at the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, where law enforcement is poor, is notorious for smuggling of weapons, money and people for terrorism leveraged by collusion with corrupt officials. The dominant illicit network there is Hezbollah, a para-military agency of Iran heavily invested in illicit trafficking in Latin America where it is supported by elements of the local populations from the Middle East. Based in Lebanon and currently fighting highly effectively with Iranian military forces in Syria for the regime of Bashar Assad, Hezbollah is the most powerful para-military and terrorism organisation in the world today.
Responsibility for the AMIA bombing was claimed by the Islamic Jihad, which operates under the umbrella of Iran and in alignment with Hezbollah. However, Ibrahim Hussein Berro is honoured by a plaque in southern Lebanon as a Hezbollah martyr for his death on the day of the AMIA bombing and is believed to be the suicide bomber responsible. This was one of a series of similar attacks in 1994 against Jewish and Israeli civilian targets from London to Panama.
Nestor Kirchner became Argentinian President and in 2005 he described the decade of fouled AMIA investigation as a ‘national disgrace’ and took steps to invigorate it, including by sacking the presiding investigator, appointing Nisman and removing obstacles to the giving of evidence. In 2006, formal charges were laid against five members of the Iranian government and one member of Hezbollah. In 2007, red notices were issued on Argentinian request by INTERPOL seeking international cooperation in their arrests. As yet, no-one has been arrested but some of the fugitives have risen to high political office in Iran.
Carlos Menem, President of Argentina 1983-1989, seems to have actively obstructed the Argentinian investigation. Menem, who is of Syrian extraction, was investigated multiple times for corruption and fled to Chile to avoid arrest 2001-2004 but ultimately returned and was convicted on weapons smuggling charges in 2013. In 2006, Menem was found also to have controlled a secret Lichtenstein bank account and is now awaiting trial on charges laid in 2012 that he obstructed investigation of the AMIA bombing, in payment for which his secret bank account is suspected of having laundered $6-10 million from Iran.
President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner (elected 2010 and still incumbent), who is the widow of Nestor Kirchner, devised an alternative track to avoid the unpleasant criminal investigations so as to facilitate lucrative trade of Iranian oil for Argentinian wheat. Accordingly, a deal to establish a joint truth commission to consider the AMIA bombing was agreed with Iran on 27 January 2013 and approved by Argentine Chamber the Deputies. It was challenged in the Supreme Court of Argentina, where it was found to be illegal. However, President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner and the foreign minister Hector Timmerman were not to be deterred, it seems, and evidence from wire taps of them giving instructions to lay false trails to subvert the AMIA bombing investigation in relation to two senior Iranian politicians was due to be presented last Monday. Unfortunately, what will happen now to bona fide trails of incriminating evidence is unsure.
Alberto Nisman’s death this week highlights an outstanding example of a powerful form of transnational organised crime: global terrorism ordered by official Iranian operators and protected by corrupt Argentinian officials. Its clear consequence is a severe trauma to the rule of law. Perhaps Alberto Nisman would have preferred us not to cry for him but for the murder of justice in Argentina.
An edited version of this article was published by The Australian.