Nisman death: 'Now we will never know what happened'
Mother of one of the victims of the 1994 terrorist attack in Argentina tells The Telegraph that she fears they will never have justice, after prosecutor Alberto Nisman found dead
By Harriet Alexander, and Irene Caselli in Buenos Aires
1:28PM GMT 24 Jan 2015
An Argentine woman who lost her only daughter in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre has described the death of the investigating prosecutor as "very suspicious," and said she fears she will now never know the truth.
Alberto Nisman, the 51-year-old prosecutor who had spent a decade attempting to find out who was behind the attack – which killed 85 people and left 300 injured – was found dead on Sunday. His death was initially treated as suicide, but now most people – including his family and President Cristina Kirchner – believe that he was killed.
"It's a very suspicious death," said Sofia Guterman, whose 28-year-old daughter Andrea died in the blast. "It's not up to us to investigate or to come up with theories, but I think that he is one more victim of the AMIA attack."
Miss Guterman was unemployed at the time of the attack, as she had just lost her job as kindergarten teacher.
On the morning of July 18 she had gone to sign herself up at a job centre which was four blocks away from the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) building, in the heart of Buenos Aires. She decided on the spur of the moment to go into the AMIA building too, because they also had a job centre inside.
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"We looked for her for seven days and seven nights," said Mrs Guterman. "Only then did we find her body. Since then we've been living through a nightmare, full of solitude and pain, and without justice."
Mrs Guterman said that she generally supported Nisman's work – unlike some of the victims' associations, who felt that he was diverting the case away from its real purpose when he stated that Mrs Kirchner had cut a deal with Iran to shield the culprits, in return for oil deals.
"Many times we argued with him because we thought there was no progress in the case, but other times we were pleased with his work.
"He was an honest man, he was very committed to the AMIA case and to he justice for the victims of the attack."
She said that they hadn't seen him in a while, but knew that he was working on "a big complaint."
"That's what he said, but we had no idea.
"When we found out that the allegations were so serious, we were shocked.
"This complaint cost him his life, after so many years of work trying to solve the case."
She said that Nisman had been under threat for years, and was open about those threats. His main worry, Mrs Guterman said, was that someone was going to hurt his two daughters.
"We never thought much of those threats, we thought instead that maybe he could be removed from the case.
"He was a daring prosecutor and carried on, no matter what."
She refused to believe that he killed himself.
"He didn't have the personality of a suicide. And if he worked so many years to put together this complaint, I think he would have waited at least for the congressional hearing to reveal the details of his allegations."
And she said that the families are concerned that the past two decades of investigation will be lost.
"For us it is important that the case continues with a prosecutor as honest as Nisman, and with someone who knows the case well. If a new prosecutor is appointed who has to start everything again from scratch, it would be a huge loss of time for everyone involved," she said.
"Nisman's death is a huge loss. No one has been arrested yet in connection to the attack, because Iran is protecting them. We are worried that all the evidence gathered by Nisman must be protected, so that this case can go ahead and finally lead to justice."
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