BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) – A federal prosecutor dismissed accusations by the late special prosecutor Alberto Nisman that Argentina’s government covered up Iran’s role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center.
On Monday, a day after Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner linked Jewish leaders to an international conspiracy against the government and railed against Nisman on social media, prosecutor Javier De Luca of the Court of Cassation refused to take on the criminal complaint filed in January by Nisman days before his shooting death.
De Luca said “it is not possible to move forward with the evidence-gathering measures proposed because those events do not constitute a crime.”
The appeals court is the highest avenue for appeals in criminal cases in Argentina, meaning that legal proceedings in the accusations against Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, who is Jewish, have reached an end. A federal judge and a federal appeals court had previously dismissed the accusations.
Seeking an extraordinary ruling, Nisman’s mother, Sara Garfunkel, filed a writ with the country’s Supreme Court asking it to maintain her son’s accusations, as well as the investigation into her son’s unsolved death.
Nisman was found dead in his Buenos Aires apartment on Jan. 16, hours before he was to present his allegations to Congress.
On Monday, a march to the court was the second gathering of planned monthly rallies calling for justice in the Nisman case. Information is disseminated using the Twitter account @MemorialNisman and the hashtag #Memorial Nisman.
Meanwhile, Kirchner tweeted her accusations on Sunday to her more than 3.7 million followers that Nisman had said during meetings with Jewish community leaders that Paul Singer, who heads a U.S. hedge fund, would provide billions of dollars to prevent Argentina from signing a memorandum of understanding with Iran on jointly investigating the AMIA bombing, which killed 85 and injured 300.
The memorandum, which has received international criticism, was signed in January 2013.
“If necessary, Paul Singer will help us,” Kirchner tweeted, quoting Nisman, adding, “To the uninformed or unaware reader, Paul Singer is the Vulture Lord and owner of the decisions of Judge Griesa against Argentina.”
Singer is part of a lawsuit to collect on Argentina’s national debt, in arrears since 2001.
Kirchner made the link between Nisman and the so-called vulture fund in a series of tweets in Spanish and in English, as well as on her personal blog, which rail against Nisman and the DAIA, the Jewish political umbrella.
DAIA denied any relationship linking local Jewish leaders and Singer.
“We feel dismay and concern about allegations made by the highest authority in the country, full of falsehoods and lies about an international conspiracy against Argentina,” DAIA Vice President Waldo Wolff told JTA.
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