Nisman has long accused Iran of planning and financing the attack, which left 85 people dead. But this month he intensified his claims, accusing Kirchner and top aides of trying to subvert his 10-year investigation into the bombing — allegations that the government has flatly rejected.

The change of position by the president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, added a major new twist into the death of the prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, who was found dead in his luxury apartment in Buenos Aires late Sunday of a gunshot wound to the head.

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Confronted with a deepening scandal, the president of Argentina abruptly reversed herself Thursday, saying that the death of a prosecutor investigating the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center was not a suicide as she and other government officials had asserted.


Using intercepted phone transcripts, Nisman asserted that the government had pursued a secret deal with Iran to exchange Iranian oil for Argentine grains — and to shield Iranian officials from charges that they had orchestrated the bombing.

Nisman had been scheduled to testify to lawmakers about his accusations Monday. News of his death, just hours before that widely anticipated testimony, stunned Argentina and immediately raised suspicions of a political cover-up to protect the president.

Thousands of angry Argentines took to the streets after Nisman’s death was announced, not only to show their anger at the unsolved bombing, which is widely considered a national disgrace, but to demand a full investigation into Nisman’s death.

After having asserted that his death appeared to be a suicide, Kirchner offered a new explanation Thursday in a post on her website, saying Nisman had been manipulated by others to smear her.

Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman. Marcos Brindicci/REUTERS/File 2013

“They used him while he was alive and then they needed him dead,” Kirchner wrote. She was now convinced, she wrote, that Nisman’s death “was not a suicide.”


The president offered no further explanation as to who might have been responsible.

Officials in Kirchner’s government have dismissed Nisman’s assertions about a secret deal with Iran, saying that he had been manipulated by Antonio Stiusso, a former senior intelligence official ousted by the president in December.

Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister, said that contrary to Nisman’s claims, the government had never tried to get Interpol to lift the arrest warrants against Iranian officials wanted in connection with the attack.

Timerman noted that he had released an email from Ronald Noble, the secretary general of Interpol from 2000 through 2014, agreeing that Timerman and the Argentine government had been “consistent and unwavering” in arguing that the arrest warrants should remain in place.

“It was not only me, but the head of Interpol that denied the charge,” Timerman said, referring to Nisman’s claim that the deal with Iran fell apart because Argentina failed to persuade Interpol to lift the warrants.

There have been no arrests in the case.