This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
JERUSALEM – Argentina's President Javier Milei, whose style of governing has seemingly completely revolutionized the South American country, recently declared the death of a prominent prosecutor investigating the July 1994 terrorist bombing of the downtown Buenos Aires Argentine-Israelite Mutual Association, to be an act of murder.
The case remains one of the most bitterly divisive in Argentina, with the previous government's insistence that Alberto Nisman, who was found dead on the floor of his apartment's bathroom exactly ten years ago in January 2015, had committed suicide being strenuously denied by those who knew him. The failure to bring anyone to justice either for the original bombing – which claimed the lives of 85 people and until Oct. 7 was the single greatest number of Jews murdered since the Holocaust – or Nisman's death is a stain on Argentina's law enforcement and judicial system.
Beyond that, Iran's dirty fingers were assessed to have been behind the attack – via its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah – and getting to the bottom of both of these cases has significant ramifications for both Argentina in particular and South America in general.
Milei's interjection could be crucial. As a vocal supporter of Israel and Jewish causes, Argentina's president's pressure may just produce some results. He said Nisman's death was at the "hands of the darkest forces of power."
It would seem simply too neat that merely days after Nisman accused then-Argentina president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and several other ex-government officials of seeking to cover up alleged Iranian involvement in the bombing, he would take his own life. Indeed, the special prosecutor was found dead the night before he was due to testify about his allegations in Congress.
A new report, presented by a federal prosecutor one week ago, supports the hypothesis that Nisman was murdered because of his work with the AMIA Attack Investigation Unit, which sought to identify the terrorists behind the bombing.
"The executive branch remains confident the judiciary will continue its investigations so that Prosecutor Nisman's murder does not go unpunished," said Milei's government in its statement Saturday.
It also called for the continuation of "the lines of investigation into Nisman's complaint."
Nisman's former wife, San Isidro Federal Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado, commented on the anniversary in a radio interview, in which she said she did not understand Kirchner's "attacks on her family," and reiterated her contention Nisman, from whom she was divorced in 2012, had "managed to shed light on the responsibility of high-ranking officials of the then-government of the Islamic Republic of Iran." And in the same interview, she pulled no punches as to the fate of her ex-husband, asserting it "has been scientifically and judicially proven with evidence since 2018 … that his murder is linked to his role in the investigation into the terrorist attack on the AMIA."
For her part Kirchner, upon whom Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tried to impose congressional sanctions in 2023 having labeled her a "convicted kleptocrat who has been indicted for obstructing investigations into Iranian terrorism" did not directly respond to Milei's assertions, merely sharing a post on X from her acolyte Oscar Parrilli, who asserted Nisman's death was a suicide.
There are far-reaching implications for Milei's intervention and the shift in emphasis. There is his own personal statement, who becomes the highest-ranking official to accept Nisman was murdered. It will also test Kirchner's resolve to continue to insist the prosecutor took his own life. And beyond that there is a geo-political dimension, which puts a most unwanted focus back on the Islamic regime in Tehran.
"In early 2007, President Nestor Kirchner chalked up his first success when Interpol issued "red notices" – alerts for internationally-wanted fugitives – for six Iranian officials, including Ahmad Vahidi, who today serves as the Iranian regime's Interior Minister," according to the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy's Ben Cohen, writing in the New York Sun. "As his investigation progressed, Nisman also uncovered valuable data about the extent of Iranian operations in Argentina and across Latin America," he added.
Kirchner could count on the support of former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, and one wonders whether he might have been included in those "darkest forces of power" Milei referenced in his statement. His successor, Nicolas Maduro, who despite election losses is still clinging to power, recently labeled Milei a "Zionist" and a "Nazi."
