Versión Español
EspañolAn Argentinean prosecutor dismissed allegations that President Cristina Kirchner covered up Iran’s alleged role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, definitively burying the case against the president and other high officials.
On Monday, April 20, Prosecutor Javier de Luca said there was not enough evidence to warrant an investigation. “The same allegations, under similar circumstances, cannot be subject of a new investigation,” he wrote.
According to the prosecutor, who is a member of the pro-government group of prosecutors Justicia Legítima, Congress and the executive branch “can’t commit crimes when they are acting under their constitutional powers.”
He wrote that producing further evidence “would only lead to the confirmation of the hypothesis that no crime was committed.”
The decision sparked controversy among Argentinean opposition members who have said that given the gravity of the allegations an investigation must be opened.
Alejandro Fargosi, a lawyer and former member of the Council of Magistrates, the body in charge of appointing and overseeing judges, believes the decision is “terribly wrong” and said that the Supreme Court should reopen the case because of the arbitrariness of the ruling.
“There could be a chance for the Supreme Court could do something new and take over the case ex officio,” he told a local radio station.
Fargosi added that De Luca’s decision reminded him of “the Nazis” who always claimed to be acting “within the law.”
Ningún juez y ningún fiscal pueden enterrar el derecho a saber la verdad q asiste a la sociedad. La verdad llega siempre, tarde o temprano
— Laura Alonso 🇦🇷 (@lauritalonso) April 21, 2015
“No judge or prosecutor is going to be able to bury the right of the society to know the truth. Truth, sooner or later, is always discovered.”
The case was previously rejected by a federal judge in February, and the dismissed again after an appeal in March. However, in previous stages prosecutors asked federal judges to open a probe into the accusation.
Prosecutor Germán Moldes, who filed the first appeal, said he feared that if the appeals took to much time to send the case to the higher court, a pro-government prosecutor would pick up the accusation and dismiss it.
On January 18, Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor who originally filed the case, was found dead of a gunshot to the head in the bathroom of his apartment, hours before he was to testify in Congress about the alleged cover-up.
The prosecutor investigating into Nisman’s death has repeatedly said that it can’t be confirmed whether he committed suicide or was killed.
The Kirchner administration has denied involvement in Nisman’s death. Initially supporting the official hypothesis of suicide, Kirchner has since alleged that disgruntled members of the intelligence services killed Nisman in an attempt to harm her government.
