By Bernardo Vazquez, 8 January 2016
Almost a year ago, Alberto Nisman unexpectedly returned from the trip he had promised his daughter to Europe, left her alone in the Madrid airport waiting for her mother and, hours after returning to the country, he presented a thunderous denunciation before Judge Maria Romilda Servini de Cubria about a cover up in signing the memorandum with Iran, against then President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and former Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, among other officials.
Ten days after the first anniversary of the still unresolved death of the AMIA Special Prosecutor, that complaint which the judiciary never even took up may re-emerge after the judicial recess, with changes and the push from the government of Mauricio Macri, especially from the Ministry of Justice headed by Germán Garavano and from the Secretary of State for investigating the bombing of the Jewish center in 1994 that left 85 victims, and the death of the prosecutor, which is led by the former UCR senator Mario Cimadevilla .
As part of the executive branch, a complaint won’t be filed at Comodoro Py on this issue, but individual filings will indeed be done which are being written to bring the case to the courts in Retiro after the summer recess. Earlier this week, in a radio interview on Radio Millenium, it was Cimadevilla himself who dared to declare that the tragic outcome of Nisman, “that he died and how he died, has to do with the investigation he was doing, of that we are almost certain.”
Phrases like that give credence to the possibility that the complaint, at the time, was dismissed for being considered almost set up by an apprentice. Judge Daniel Rafecas was highly critical of the complaint, which had previously circulated in the courts of his colleagues Servini de Cubria and Ariel Lijo. Subsequently, in April and following steps by all previous instances, it was the prosecutor at the Court of Cassation Javier de Luca who withdrew from continuing to investigate the Nisman complaint, as requested by his peer Germán Moldes, one of the main promoters of the march of February 18 last year to demand justice for Nisman.
The fact that Judge Fabiana Palmaghini has taken charge of the investigation of the case of the death of Nisman, which until recently was led by prosecutor Viviana Fein, also enhances the options for the Nisman issue to be reinstated in the courts. Before the end of 2015, Palmaghini asked to receive the whole case that Rafecas closed from the complaint that the prosecutor had filed against Cristina. Among other measures, she also requested to summon the former spy Antonio Stiuso to testify.
According to Nisman, the former president was a participant “in a criminal plan to provide impunity to the Iranian nationals accused in this case, to evade the investigation and evade the action of the judiciary with jurisdiction in the case” .
If reopened, it would be the second case that would compromise the former president in court, as Rafecas is in charge of the Hotesur case, after the Federal Court removed Claudio Bonadio. That case is investigating alleged irregularities in the hotel chain of the Kirchner family, its ties with businessman Lazaro Baez and how the wealth of Maximo and Cristina Kirchner have increased in recent years.