At Alberto Nisman Tributes, Hope That Death Mystery Will Be Solved

Image by Getty Images
BUENOS AIRES (JTA) — Two years after the still mysterious death of AMIA Jewish Center bombing prosecutor Alberto Nisman the organizers of tributes to his memory appear hopeful that the circumstances of his death will be clarified.
Tributes were held both in Argentina and Israel on Wednesday.
“The is a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel,” prosecutor German Moldes , said Wednesday in Buenos Aires, one of the three speakers, to a crowd that gathered in front of the AMIA prosecutor’s unit that had been managed by Nisman.
Moldes said that his colleague, Eduardo Taiano, who is leading the investigation into Nisman’s death, has received death threats over the ongoing investigation.
“We must continue working for the truth. How we will give up if Taiano who receives threats on his live does not give up” Moldes told the crowd of more than 1,000 people.
Writer Federico Anaphase and Luis Czyczewski, the father of Paola, who died in 1994 AMIA attack, also spoke during the two-year anniversary tribute in Buenos Aires. Iara and Kala, Nisman daughters, lit a candle in their father’s memory.
In March 2016, the Buenos Aires Criminal Appeals court ruled that the case must be heard in federal court, which has accelerated movement on the case.
Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri, on Wednesday during his first press conference of 2017, told reporters that the Nisman investigation now “is on the right path.”
In Israel a memorial for Nisman was held at Wednesday in Jerusalem at the Knesset, during a meeting of the Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs Committee. One of the speakers was the Argentine-Israeli writer Gustavo Perednik, an expert on terrorism and friend of Nisman who rejected the suicide hypothesis in the case.
“Alberto’s murder has absolutely been proven, there is just no Argentine judge who will say it and declare it, but this will happen soon,” he said, adding that the recent judiciary news to open and investigate Nisman’s accusation against the country’s former president and other government officials “raises great hopes. We will slowly get to the truth as Nisman hoped,” he said.
Journalist Roxana Levinson and Argentinean ambassador Carlos García also delivered tributes at the Knesset. The Israeli parliamentary session included representatives from the ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Diaspora ministries, along with the World Zionist Organization, the Jewish Agency and the Association of Latin-American Immigrants in Israel, or OLEI.
After the Cassation court ruled on Dec. 29 against the previous lower courts’ dismissals, Nisman’s accusations that the former government to cover up the role of Iran in the 1994 bombing that destroyed the Buenos Aires AMIA Jewish center building finally will start to be investigated in February after the January summer break.
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
