Argentine President: Death of prosecutor investigating 1994 attack on Jewish centre was killed in a plot to smear my name

Mr Nisman was the lead prosecutor on the investigation of a 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish centre that killed 85 people

Argentina President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (Reuters)

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has said that the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman was not a suicide, as was originally reported, and said he was killed in a plot to smear her name.

Mr Nisman was the lead prosecutor on the investigation of a 1994 attack on the AMIA Jewish centre that killed 85 people. He had alleged that Ms Kirchner orchestrated a cover-up in that attack and he was set to present his case to Congress later on the day he was found dead. The Argentine government has dismissed Mr Nisman’s accusations as false.

In the post-mortem report, officials said they found a .22-calibre pistol and shell casing by his head, and found no evidence that anyone else was involved in Mr Nisman’s death.

But the president has since said otherwise, according to a report by Reuters

"They used him while he was alive and then they needed him dead," Ms Kirchner wrote in an open letter to the nation. She later posted on Facebook that Mr Nisman’s death was “the suicide that I am now convinced was not a suicide”.

The president didn’t implicate anyone in the prosecutor’s death, which on Monday set off protests demanding explanation of the the suspicious circumstances.