“Argentinean prosecutor was murdered,” claims his ex-wife

The former wife of the late Argentinean prosecutor Alberto Nisman said Thursday that she has evidence that the investigator did not commit suicide, but was in fact murdered.

“They killed Alberto Nisman,” said Sandra Arroyo Salgado, who also serves as a federal judge, during a news conference in San Isidro, outside Buenos Aires.

The report bluntly rules out the theory that it was an accident or a suicide”

Arroyo, in the name of the two children she had with Nisman, aged 8 and 15, and the prosecutor’s mother, Sara Garfunkel, are plaintiffs in the probe into his death.

Nisman’s body was found in his apartment with a gunshot wound to his head on January 18. Just four days earlier, he asked a judge to open an investigation against President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and other government officials for allegedly trying to whitewash his inquiry into the 1994 deadly bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center.

As a plaintiff in the case, Arroyo Salgado put together a group of experts who worked on their own private investigation. She was expected on Friday to turn over a report to Judge Fabiana Palmaghini, who is conducting the probe.

“The report bluntly rules out the theory that it was an accident or a suicide,” she said.

The team of experts – two forensic pathologists, a criminologist, a psychiatrist and a computer expert – based its conclusions on “the evidence found at the crime scene, the autopsy report and other expertise,” she said.

Among the evidence used were photos and videos taken by authorities at the scene and images of his body during the autopsy as well as ballistic tests.

Arroyo complained that her experts were not permitted to investigate during the first hours after his body was found or days after his death. She also contradicted prosecutor Viviana Fein’s observation that Nisman died instantly and didn’t suffer.

The violent death questions the state’s role in fighting international terrorism”

“In a political and legal context, the violent death has had an impact on the Republic’s institutional order and also questions the state’s role in fighting international terrorism,” Arroyo said.

Nisman believed that Fernández and others tried to negotiate a grain-for-oil deal with Iran in exchange for impunity for a group of fugitive Iranians charged with the car bombing that left 85 people killed and dozens injured.

Besides Fernández, Nisman asked for investigations into Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman, ruling party deputy Andrés Larroque, party official Luis D’Elía, and others.

Nisman’s complaint, which was dismissed by a judge after it was reactivated following his death, is before an appeals court, which is expected to rule in the coming days whether to continue his investigation.