Alberto Nisman, the Argentinian prosecutor whose unexplained death triggered a political earthquake, originally planned to seek the arrest of the country’s president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, on charges of conspiring to cover up Iran’s alleged role in the country’s worst terrorist attack, the lead investigator in the case said on Tuesday.

The petition for the president’s arrest is contained in a 26-page draft written by Nisman last June, said prosecutor Viviana Fein. Nisman lacked the power to order her arrest himself, but he planned to petition Judge Ariel Lijo to order the president’s detention once she was impeached by Congress – as he expected would occur once his charges became public.

Given the president’s ample majority in both houses of Congress, the impeachment process would have been long and laborious, which may explain why Nisman eventually left out the request from the accusation. In the 300-page document presented to Lijo on 14 January, Nisman asked only for Fernández to face questioning by the judge.

Even without an arrest warrant, Nisman’s charges have proven to be a judicial hot potato. Lijo recused himself from the case last week, passing it on to Judge Daniel Rafecas, who turned down hearing the case on Monday. The case has now returned to Lijo, who is expected to ask the federal chamber of appeals to name a judge to handle it.





Nisman was found dead in his apartment’s bathroom on 19 January, five days after presenting his charges in court and one day before he was due to go before Congress to brief legislators on his evidence against the president.

Fein’s discovery of Nisman’s draft arrest warrant was originally reported by the opposition newspaper Clarín on Sunday, but the report prompted an indignant denial from the government. Seething with anger, cabinet chief Jorge Capitanich tore a copy of the newspaper to pieces in a live television press conference. “This is false rubbish,” said Capitanich, a close Fernández aide.

On Monday, Fein issued a statement saying “no draft of Nisman’s charges” had been found at his home. But Capitanich’s performance at the press conference prompted a media uproar, and on Tuesday, Fein admitted the newspaper report was true. “It was an error of terminology and interpretation,” she said. The draft warrant was found in a rubbish bin, during a search of Nisman’s flat.

Argentina’s cabinet chief, Jorge Capitanich, rips two pages of the daily Clarín during a press conference in Buenos Aires. Photograph: Telam/Handout/EPA

The rumpus over Nisman’s orginal draft seemed to boost charges that the government is trying to manipulate Nisman’s case. Nicolás Wiñazki, the Clarín journalist who revealed the existence of the draft, accused the government today of “interfering in the investigation of the mysterious death of the prosecutor”.



A Clarín cartoonist, Bernardo Erlich, tweeted: “The difference between Nisman, Lijo and Rafecas is that Nisman did not recuse himself [in the case]. And look how it turned out for him.”

Nisman had spent years investigating the 1994 bomb attack on the Amia Jewish community centre in downtown Buenos Aires which killed 85 people. According to Nisman’s investigation, Iran was the prime suspect in the blast.