400,000 Argentines Pay Tribute to Alberto Nisman

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By JTA February 19, 2015

More than 400,000 people in Buenos Aires braved a heavy rain to pay tribute to the late AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman in a “silent march.”

Other marches remembering Nisman on the one-month anniversary of his death were held Wednesday throughout Argentina and in cities throughout the world.

The Metropolitan Police in Buenos Aires pegged the number of marchers in the city’s downtown at some 400,000. The event was held without speeches.

Nisman, 51, was found dead in his Buenos Aires home on Jan. 18, hours before he was to present evidence to Argentine lawmakers that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and other government officials covered up Iran’s role in the 1994 attack on the Buenos Aires Jewish center that killed 85 and injured hundreds.

Nisman’s mother Sara Garfunkel, his ex-wife Sandra Arroyo Salgado, and the couple’s oldest daughter, Iara, 15, led the Buenos Aires march ahead of the prosecutors and judges who called for the demonstration. It started at the Congress building and ended in downtown Buenos Aires at the Government’s House.

Members of the DAIA, the Jewish political umbrella in Argentina; FACCMA, the Argentine Federation of Maccabean Community Centers; and AMIA gathered before the rally in front of the AMIA building in order to march together. The prosecutors also gathered before the march in front of Nisman’s office.

“I returned to my house shocked and touched by this enormous civic demonstration,” Waldo Wolff, DAIA’s vice president, told JTA. “There are a lot of good people in Argentina that are asking for justice and truth.”

Judiciary union leader Julio Piumato said from the stage, “We want to express our condolences to his family,” before asking the crowd to be silent for a minute to pay tribute to Nisman.

Arroyo Salgado in an interview Thursday with Voerterix radio said of the march, “It was very exciting and very difficult for me and my daughter. The people sent me words of support, strength and confidence in what I could do.”

Arroyo Salgado repeated her belief that Nisman did not commit suicide.

“I cannot accept Alberto Nisman’s suicide because of his personality, even less with a gun involved,” she said. “He had no reason to do that.”

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