After prosecutor's death, Argentina continues to look for answers
BUENOS AIRES - Last month, a special prosecutor in Argentina was found dead just before he was to accuse the government of a coverup in an infamous bombing.
"Each story is a life that was taken," sad Anita Weinstein, who remembers everything about that day in 1994.
Eighty-five people were killed, 300 were injured when a car bomb destroyed a Jewish community center. Weinstein crawled out of the rubble.
"The moment I turned around and I saw what happened," she said. "How everything below us was destroyed and people shouting and survivors alsotrying to get out from there. That was the most terrible moment."
Special prosecutor Alberto Nisman had investigated the bombing for more than a decade. He had reached the explosive claim that Iran was behind the attack, and that the Argentine government covered up that involvement in return for a deal for Iranian oil.
The night before he would present his findings to Congress, Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment with a bullet to his head.
"I couldn't believe what I was hearing," said Weinstein. "That moment brought me back to the first moment after the bombing. It was again a life that was taken."
President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner first called Nisman's death a suicide, but later suggested he may have been murdered.
Angry Argentinians took to the streets, holding signs saying "I Am Nisman." The case has gripped the country, fuelling speculation about potential assassins. Today one politician said he'd had enough of the sensational coverage, tearing up a newspaper on television.
But two weeks after Nisman's death, the case is no clearer. To complicate matters the president has now suggested that Nisman may have died at the hands of rogue spies connected to the country's intelligence agency.
But for Weinstein, Nisman's death means that 21 years of waiting isn't over yet.
"I hope we can get justice," Weinstein said. "I don't understand any other way a society can live without justice."
Both the Argentine and Iranian governments deny Nisman's claims. Now, President Kirchner wants to dissolve the country's spy agency and start a new one. The debate on that proposal begins Tuesday.
