Police video shows evidence contaminated immediately after Nisman’s death

An Argentine news program has broadcast a video recorded by investigators at the home of Alberto Nisman after he was found dead on January 18, 2015. The video shows the crime scene was crowded with people in all the rooms of the home. Additionally, it was found that evidence, such as the gun found under his bed and his personal documents found in a safe, were tampered with or handled without gloves by investigators, including prosecutor Viviana Fein herself.

The video shows one investigator handling the gun that killed Nisman, and is shown wiping it with toilet paper before it was collected and laying it inside the bidet next to Nisman’s body as bullets were removed from its chamber. The portion of the video showing the tampering with the gun includes a sudden jump cut in the original recording, El Pais reports, where images may have shown exactly how investigators tampered with it. Fein is also seen tracking Nisman’s blood around the scene under her shoes before the body had been removed, and handling vital evidence without gloves.

The Argentine television program, which included excerpts from the video on May 31, characterized the crime scene as being as crowded as “Tokyo at two in the afternoon,” and a leading Argentine forensic expert said the video “shows how things should not be done” at a crime scene.

The carelessness shown in the video has characterized the investigation from the start; it is curios that a federal prosecutor, who had formally accused the President of Argentina of a criminal conspiracy, ended up dead and six months later, the cause of his death still has not been fully determined. Given the fact that Argentine authorities did not handle the investigation with care, an international probe into Nisman’s death may be necessary. Nisman’s family has already called for it.

International interest in pushing for a clarifying of Nisman’s mysterious death has continued in the six months since the incident. The most recent example of this is the meeting in Washington on June 1 between AMIA President Leonardo Jmelinitzky and the U.S. Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roberta Jacobson. In the meeting, the United States renewed its call for Nisman’s death to be solved, as well as a continuation of his prosecution of the 1994 terrorist bombing of the AMIA.