28 January 2015

The mysterious 'martyrdom' of Alberto Nisman

Al Jazeera

Last week, Argentina had its very own #JeSuisCharlie moment, with the hashtag#YoSoyNisman ("I am Nisman") proliferating across city squares and social media.
The subject of digitised solidarity in this case was Alberto Nisman, an Argentinean special prosecutor found dead in his home on January 18 in what was either a suicide or a cover-up made to look like one.
Nisman had been set to speak to Congress the following day to outline his latest complaints regarding the alleged complicity of President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and other officials in covering up the also alleged complicity of Iran in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires. The attack killed 85 people.
The case against Iran - which has been repeated so unceasingly that the allegations are often passed off as fact - goes something like this: As part of its ongoing hobby as a US-designated "state sponsor of terrorism", the Islamic republic conspired with Lebanon's Hezbollah to deal a blow to the Argentine Jewish community.
The plot was hatched in the Tri-Border Area between Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay, whose sizable Arab/Muslim population has served as a convenient scapegoat for both the AMIA bombing and the 1992 attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires.
Iran was angry, so the story goes, over suspended nuclear technology contracts with Argentina and other matters, and Hezbollah - always eager to do the bidding of its Iranian sponsor - was also in retaliatory mode due to the killing and kidnapping programme then under way as part of Israel's occupation of south Lebanon. READ MORE AT AL JAZEERA.