Alberto Nisman's Death and AMIA: Who Cares About the Truth?
- Details
- Published on Tuesday, 24 February 2015 00:00
- Written by editor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1084 .... February 24, 2015
_____________________________________________________
Alberto Nisman’s Death and AMIA:
Who Cares About the Truth?
Ezequiel Adamovsky
On 18 January the Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead in his apartment in Buenos Aires. A few days before he had returned from his vacations in Europe and presented a shocking and unexpected accusation. He claimed he had proof that President Cristina Kirchner and the Foreign Minister Hector Timerman were in the process of orchestrating a cover-up in the investigation of Iran over the 1994 bombing of AMIA (the main Jewish community center of Argentina) that left 85 dead. He presented his proof -- a lengthy 289-page report -- to a federal judge, who was not able to immediately reveal its content, as it mentioned Argentine intelligence agents by name. The... opposition summoned Nisman to the Congress to present his findings. The meeting, scheduled for the 19 January, was never held, as Nisman died a few hours before.
In the polarized political life of Argentina, the case was immediately used for political purposes. The main newspapers and TV channels, sworn enemies of the government, sparked doubts over the circumstances of Nisman's death, suggesting that he was either murdered or pushed to commit suicide in a last-minute attempt to prevent his presentation to the Congress. Politicians in the opposition immediately fueled similar theories. Hundreds of people set to the streets carrying placards "I am Nisman" (or "Je suis Nisman" written in French, as an echo of the Charlie Hebdo demonstrations), blaming the government for the death of an honest man who had uncovered its dirty secrets. "I am Nisman" became a trending topic in social networks, while anti-Kirchner intellectuals and journalists proclaimed that the murder/induced suicide of Nisman was the symbol of the death of the Republic under Kirchner's administration. Similar stories were soon reproduced by the international media, which used the case as yet another example of the phantasmal threat of Latin American "populism" and for other purposes (including the bashing of Obama over his Iran policy).