In 2004, an Argentine prosecutor named Alberto Nisman began an investigation into Hizballah’s 1994 bombing of the Buenos Aires AMIA Jewish center, which killed 84 people. His much obstructed, yearslong investigation uncovered direct Iranian involvement as well as an effort at the highest levels of the Argentinian government to cover up this involvement. In 2015, Nisman died under highly suspicious circumstances and his death was ruled a suicide. But unlike its predecessors, the current government of Javier Milei is not invested in suppressing Nisman’s findings, and there has at last been a breakthrough. Ben Cohen and Toby Dershowitz write:
On January 10, 2025, an Argentinian federal court’s investigation affirmed that Nisman’s death, which some had sought to depict as a suicide, was in fact a murder. The report concluded that Nisman was murdered because of his work investigating the role of Iran in the bombing and that of the Argentinian president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in a cover-up during her time in office.
Judge Eduardo Taiano, leading the investigation into Nisman’s death, revealed a litany of suspicious activities. The day before he was found dead, thousands of electronic files related to the AMIA bombing were destroyed in a fire in the presidential offices. Nisman’s guards abandoned their posts for twelve hours prior to his body being found. Nisman’s computer consultant with suspicious connections, Diego Lagomarsino, owned the pistol used to kill Nisman. . . . Taiano also confirmed that Nisman’s assailants, whose identity Taiano committed to pursuing, shot him in the bathroom of his apartment using Lagomarsino’s gun and then placed his body in a position to “simulate a suicide.”
Ten years after Nisman’s murder, and 31 years after the AMIA bombing, no one has been convicted of either crime. Nisman’s investigation and Taiano’s report point to the roles of senior Iranian and Argentinian officials. As the truth emerges, so must the wheels of justice now turn.
Read more at Jerusalem Strategic Tribune
More about: Alberto Nisman, AMIA bombing, Argentina, Iran