For the first time, an Argentinian judicial official has confirmed that the former special prosecutor investigating into the 1994 AMIA bombing, Alberto Nisman, was murdered.
Ricardo Sáenz, the prosecutor before the Buenos Aires Criminal Appeals Court, demanded that the investigation of the mysterious death of Nisman be handled by federal judicial authorities, and said Nisman was the victim of a “homicide.”
In a ruling presented before the Appeals Court, Sáenz supported on Thursday the hypothesis put forward by the two plaintiffs in the case – Nisman’s daughters, mother and sister – and said that the case can no longer be handed by Judge Fabiana Palmaghini, but must go before a federal magistrate.
“The procedural action in this case according to the evidence produced until now is the hypothesis that Alberto Nisman has been victim of a homicide crime,” the prosecutor said. He mentioned the name of Diego Lagomarsino, the IT engineer who worked with Nisman at the AMIA special unit and admitted having lent him the gun that was used to kill Nisman.
Nisman, the lead investigator into the horrific 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires Jewish center, and a Jew himself, was found dead in his bathroom on January 18, 2015, a .22-caliber revolver at his side.
He had been due to appear before a congressional hearing the next day to deliver a scathing report that accused then-president Cristina Kirchner of shielding high-ranking Iranian officials from prosecution over the bombing.