Family members and supporters of Alberto Nisman, a prosecutor investigating government involvement in a cover-up related to the 1994 bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish centre, have rejected initial findings that he committed suicide.

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Nisman, 51, was found in the bathroom of his locked apartment on Sunday with a bullet wound on the right side of his head and a .22-caliber handgun along with a single bullet casing beside him, authorities said. His death came just hours before he was to testify before congress.

The prosecutor had spent 10 years investigating the Jewish centre bombing, a still-unsolved attack that left 85 people dead. Nisman’s testimony was to include accusations that Argentine President Cristina Fernandez Kirchner, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman and other top officials had agreed to protect the Iranian officials who allegedly masterminded the bombing.

Argentina’s government has dismissed the allegations as ludicrous.

Congresswoman Cornelia Schmidt-Liermann said she had planned to pick Nisman up at his residence on Monday and accompany him to congress for his testimony.

“Everybody who had contact with him in the past 24 hours says he was confident” about his testimony, she told The Associated Press. “There is no indication, under any circumstances, that he killed himself.”

Nisman’s family also rejected that he committed suicide in condolence notices published in the La Nacion newspaper. “A profound sadness and pain for a death so unjust,” said a joint letter drafted by his uncles, aunts and cousins.

Nisman’s ex-wife, Judge Sandra Arroyo, acknowledged that investigators needed more time but seemed to have no doubt when asked by reporters on Tuesday whether her former husband’s death could have been a suicide.

“No,” she answered.

But she added: “We must let justice proceed. I cannot make conjectures.”

Colleagues said they’d seen no sign Nisman planned to kill himself and no suicide letter was found, according to an adviser to the ministry who spoke on condition of anonymity.

'I could end up dead'

Nisman himself seemed to know that he was treading a dangerous path.

After filing the legal complaint last week that implicated Kirchner, Timerman and others, he made a premonitory comment to reporters about his investigation.

"I could end up dead from this," Nisman told Clarin, a leading Argentinian daily paper.

Viviana Fein, the lead investigator into Nisman’s death, said Monday that his death appeared to be a suicide and that no indications had surfaced to suggest anyone else was involved. The gun found next to Nisman had been given to him by a colleague, she said. Sergio Berni, secretary of national security, said that the gun was registered to a Diego Lagomarsino, who reportedly gave it to Nisman on Saturday.

An initial test for gunshot residue on Nisman’s hand was negative. Fein said that was not unusual given the small caliber of the weapon.

Nisman had said he’d been threatened repeatedly for his work and, at the time of his death, 10 federal police officers had been assigned to protect him. Investigators planned to question the officers Tuesday starting with those posted outside his building on the night of his death.

The 1994 bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) is considered the worst terrorist attack in Argentina’s history. In 2005, Nisman was appointed by then- president Nestor Kirchner, Fernandez’s husband, to revive the floundering investigation.

Nisman requested that arrest orders be issued against several Iranian officials, including a former president and foreign minister, which an Argentine judge agreed to in 2006. Interpol later put most of them on its most-wanted list.

But the case made little progress and, in 2013, Argentina and Iran agreed to investigate the attack jointly, a move critics said was meant to undermine Nisman’s probe.

Nisman had asked a federal judge to call Fernandez and others, including Foreign Minister Timerman, for questioning. The judge was considering Nisman’s request at the time of his death.

On Tuesday, the Argentine Supreme Court disclosed the 289-page accusation that he presented to federal judge Dr. Ariel O. Lijo on January 14.

In its powerful conclusion, Nisman wrote that Fernandez “gave an express order to design and execute a plan disconnecting the accused Iranians from the case of the AMIA attack”. He added that not only did the president decide to pursue a “criminal plan of impunity” but was in control of it at all times.

Fernandez has denied the accusations and on Tuesday linked his death to the legal process against former members of the 1989-1999 government of Carlos Menem for alleged irregularities in the initial investigation into the attack.

Her cabinet chief, Jorge Capitanich, said the claims of government involvement in Nisman’s death amounted to “false accusations” but added that it is “necessary that the clarification by the executive power be clear, convincing and undeniable”.

Protesters gathered in the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires in the wake of the prosecutor's death.

"The killing of Nisman will mobilise the Argentine people to put an end to the corruption, to end this state of disaster that we live in here in Argentina," one protester told CNN.

(FRANCE 24 with AP)

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