The Slatest

Charges Against Argentine President Dismissed in Case Created by “Suicide” Prosecutor

Fernández arriving in Russia on Tuesday.

Yuri Kadobnova/AFP/Getty

A prosecutor appointed by a top appeals court has dismissed charges that Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner helped cover up Iran’s involvement in a 1994 Buenos Aires synagogue bombing, “likely” ending the case initiated by another prosecutor who died suspiciously in January. From Reuters:

Federal prosecutor Javier De Luca was assigned by Argentina’s top appeals court after the case had already been rejected by a lower court in February, a decision upheld by a lower appeals court on account of “lack of evidence.”

“There has been no crime,” De Luca told Reuters. In his official statement, he said his decision was “equivalent to a definitive sentence.”

The accusations against Fernádez were initially made public by Alberto Nisman, who was found dead Jan. 18 in what was at first described by the government as a suicide despite the lack of a suicide note or any known reason he would have had for killing himself. (It’s still very unclear how and why he died.) Nisman believed that Argentine officials covered up Iran’s complicity in the ’94 bombing in order to help advance trade negotiations between the two countries.

Fernández’s camp has also suggested Nisman could have been killed by rogue intelligence agents who mean to undermine her administration; officials recently made character-undermining accusations that Nisman had “received salary kick-backs from the IT specialist who had been working with him on his original investigation into the bombing.” Fernández has also suggested Nisman was possibly allied with Jewish groups related to Paul Singer, a New York hedge fund director whose dispute with Argentina over money it owes one of his companies once led to the seizure of the country’s naval flagship.