Argentine President Cristina Fernandez on Monday said that she will disband Argentina’s intelligence service after a prosecutor was found dead just hours before he was to make explosive allegations against her.
Alberto Nisman, 51, was found in his Buenos Aires home with a gunshot to the head on Jan. 18, the day before he was to go before a congressional hearing to accuse Fernandez of obstructing his investigation into a 1994 bombing at a Jewish charities federation office.
She denies the claims and says Nisman’s death was a plot to discredit her.
Fernandez on Monday said: “The plan is to dissolve the Secretariat of Intelligence, and create a federal intelligence agency,” adding that the leadership of the agency will be chosen by the president, but subject to Argentine Senate approval.
Fernandez removed the leadership of the current intelligence service last month. She said she would send her intelligence system reform bill to Argentine Congress before she leaves for China next week, and swiftly scheduled special congressional sessions for it to be taken up.
Fernandez also took aim at Diego Lagomarsino, a Nisman colleague who lent Nisman the pistol with which the prosecutor was killed. Lagomarsino on Monday was charged with giving a gun to someone who is not its registered owner, officials said.
“Lagomarsino is not just a staunch opponent of the government,” Fernandez said, suggesting his brother’s work on behalf of the Clarin newspaper, in her view, raised red flags.
She has had a long-running feud with the paper.
The 1994 attack, which killed 85 people, has never been solved.
Nisman accused Fernandez and Argentine Minister of Foreign Relations Hector Timerman of shielding Iranian officials implicated in the bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association.
After his death, Fernandez said Nisman had been manipulated by former intelligence agents who then killed him to smear her. Fernandez has offered no evidence to support her theory, and did not say who she thought was behind Nisman’s death.
However, aides in recent days have pointed to former intelligence officials who were recently fired, including former Secretariat of Intelligence chief of operations Antonio Stiusso, who worked closely with Nisman.
Investigators said Nisman’s death appeared to be suicide, but it has been classified as a “suspicious” death, and homicide or an “induced suicide” have not been ruled out.
Nisman said that the government had agreed to swap grain for oil with Tehran in exchange for withdrawing “red notices” to Interpol seeking the arrests of the former and current Iranian officials accused in the case.
A top Fernandez aide offered assurances that journalists enjoy “full security” in Argentina, after a reporter who revealed the Nisman death fled to Israel.
Damian Pachter left Argentina on Saturday, having said that he received threats and was being followed.
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