Tributes to Nisman express hope that mystery of his death will be solved
Published January 19, 2017
A vigil in Buenos Aires on the first anniversary of Argentinean prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s death, Jan. 18, 2016. (Omer Musa Targal/Anadolu Agency/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 Andahazi 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.
