JANUARY 9, 2020 | The Jewish Home
Highlighting the Murder of Alberto Nisman A new Netflix series is shining new light on an Argentinian lawyer’s suspicious death days before he was to accuse the country’s president of covering up the bombing of a Jewish center. Titled “Nisman: The Prosecutor, the President, and the Spy,” the series examines the 2015 death of Alberto Nisman that rocked the South American country. The series premiered on January 1 and will run for six episodes.
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ing then-President Christina Fernandez de Kirchner of covering up the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires. The bombing was an attack on the Asociacion Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) building in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994. Eighty-five people were killed; hundreds others were injured. It is the deadliest bombing in Argentine history. The attack had the highest Jewish toll since the Holocaust and was widely presumed to be the work of Iran. No perpetrators were ever brought to justice and the unsolved case remains a sore spot in Argentina’s Jewish community. Following 18 years of research, Nisman was ready to present his findings that fingered Kirshner in covering up Iran’s true role in the bombing. He and his partner formally accused Iran of directing the bombing in 2006. In 2015, Nisman filed a 300-page document accusing Kirchner of covering up Iran’s role in the incident. His alleged “suicide” threw a wrench into those plans, sparking theories that Nisman was, in fact, murdered by Kirchner to avoid facing justice for her crimes. In 2017, Judge Claudio Bonadio accused Kirchner of treason and called on the country’s senate to permit her arrest and trial for allegedly covering up Iranian involvement in the 1994 bomb attack. Kirchner is currently referred for public trial over alleged cover-up of Iranian involvement in the bombing. A day after the first episode aired on Netflix, Argentinian President Alberto Fernandez denied in an interview that Kirchner was responsible for Nisman’s death but said that he did not believe that the prosecutor’s death was a suicide. “I doubt that someone who was going through a euphoric moment could commit suicide, I don’t know that. I’m allowing myself to doubt it,” Fernandez admitted. Argentina is home to 230,000 Jews, the largest Jewish community in Latin America and the sixth in the world outside Israel.
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long prison sentence. Instead, he will now be released within the next few weeks after a Paris court ruled in December that he was not responsible for his actions. Pointing to the drugs Troare had consumed prior to the vicious attack, judges gave the shocking order to see the murdered free. Attorneys representing the Halimi family said it was a “scandalous decision” and confirmed they were preparing to appeal to the French Supreme Court. “I’m angry and ashamed of our legal system,” said Francis Spinner, a lawyer representing Ms. Halimi’s children. “It’s a scandalous decision. They’ve just created a new Sarah Halimi jurisprudence, starting today. Anyone who took illegal substances can go free without any criminal responsibility. Tonight, this man is free from justice, he is completely sane and will soon be released from the hospital.” Spinner added: “Sarah Halimi’s family will try to bring the case to the Supreme Court, but she may not be able to do so.” Moriel Oknin, a lawyer representing Ms. Halimi’s brother, said she was “very concerned about the implications of this decision. I worry about the future of Jews living in France.” The Jewish Student Union in France commented on the decision, saying “the decision marked the entry of the immunity rule in the face of the deadly anti-Semitism in the country.” Meir Habib, French MP, commented on the decision, saying, “As a Member of Parliament, I do not make judicial decisions, but as someone involved in this case from the first day at the family’s request, I am simply appalled, the judges declared that a murderer is criminally irresponsible.” “The refusal of the judge and the police to reconstruct [the crime is] delusional,” he added.
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Nisman had been found shot dead in his apartment in 2015, shortly after accus-
A West Bank military court convicted a Palestinian teenager this week of murdering Israeli-American Ari Fuld in a
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