The Argentine prosecutor has formally indicted President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, her foreign minister and other official for allegedly trying to remove Iranian officials from Interpol lists of suspects of the 1994 bombing that killed 85 people at the Jewish AMIA center in Buenos Aires.
Kirchner has denounced the accusation as a “vulgar lie” and an attempt at a Judicial coup.”
Kirchner, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, a legislator and other officials allegedly acted on behalf of Iran in return for benefits in trade with Tehran.
Kirchner also is suspected by many of involvement in last month’s murder of Alberto Nisman, the Jewish prosecutor in the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association community center bombing case. He was killed hours before he was to submit to the legislature his findings that implicated Iran in the murders.
She has said Nisman was murdered in an attempt to blacken the image of her government, already in trouble because of an economic crisis gripping the country.
Nisman has been replaced by a team of prosecutors, and if they “just happen” to decide that Iran was not involved, then the indictment against Kirchner will be worth nothing.
A massive protest rally against the government is planned for Wednesday, and supporters of Kirchner, such as Chief of Staff Anibal Fernanderz, charged that drug traffickers and anti-Semites are organizing the demonstration to hide their own supposed attempts to obstruct the investigation into the Buenos Aires bombing.
Cabinet Chief Jorge Capitanich said, “The Argentine people should know that we’re talking about a vulgar lie, of an enormous media operation, of a strategy of political destabilization and the biggest judicial coup d’etat in the history of Argentina to cover up for the real perpetrators of the crime.”