The ex-wife of dead Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman on Thursday rejected claims he’d killed himself and called for independent oversight of the probe, a day after huge crowds called for justice in the case.
Nisman was found dead last month, just days after accusing Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner of interfering in the investigation of a 1994 bombing of a Jewish center and covering up the role of Iranian officials. The attack killed 85 people and wounded 300 more.
Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado said nothing in her ex-husband’s personality led her to suspect he took his own life.
“He had no reason to do this, considering his personality. I do not see this possibility, much less so with the use of a gun,” Arroyo Salgado said, according to AFP.
She told Vorterix radio that if Nisman was murdered, it was “very sophisticated.”
Arroyo Salgado also called for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to oversee the death probe due to the difficulty of carrying out an impartial investigation.
The charges drawn up by Nisman were subsequently endorsed by a new team of prosecutors and are now before a judge.
Kirchner previously suggested Nisman was killed by rogue intelligence agents, and has asked lawmakers to disband the country’s Intelligence Secretariat.
Arroyo Salgado took part Wednesday’s march in which tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Buenos Aires and cities across the country to pay tribute to Nisman and to demand justice.
Investigators say there were no signs that Nisman resisted an attack in his apartment in a guarded neighborhood in the capital. They initially said the 51-year-old’s death appeared to be suicide, though that theory is widely disbelieved in Argentina.
In his accusation against Kirchner, Nisman said the Argentine leader was working behind the scenes to protect the Iranians in return for oil, at a time when the South American country was in the midst of an energy crisis.
He also alleged that Kirchner asked Interpol to lift outstanding “red notices” against the Iranians — a request that Interpol’s former director denied had been made.
It has been revealed that Nisman had drafted arrest warrants for Kirchner and for Foreign Minister Hector Timerman before he was found dead.