Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (left), the late Argentine federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman (right).
An Argentine judge on Thursday dismissed allegations that President Cristina Fernández had conspired to cover up Iran’s alleged role in the deadly bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish center in 1994, Reuters reports.
Argentine Judge Daniel Rafecas said that he would “discontinue” the case as “the evidence gathered far from meets the minimal standard,” Reuters reports, citing the Argentinean Judicial Information Centre (CIJ).
The case against President Fernández was originally headed by late federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was found dead in mysterious circumstances in January the day before he was to appear in Congress to testify on the matter, however the case was revived earlier in February by federal prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita.
Nisman’s mysterious death shocked the country and brought widespread protests and unrest in Buenos Aires as critics of the president alleged that the prosecutor was killed rather than having committed suicide.
The government scandal weighed on President Fernández’s popularity and hurt the government’s credibility ahead of the October presidential election.
Pollicita had renewed Nisman’s investigation into whether President Fernández had interfered with the investigation of Argentina’s worst ever terror attack in exchange for favorable deals with Iranian oil producers.
Nisman had claimed that President Fernández had opened a secret back channel to Iran in order to cover up Tehran’s alleged involvement in the 1994 bombing and to help Argentina gain access to Iranian oil so that it could close the gap on its $7 billion annual energy deficit.
Fernández called Nisman’s cover-up claims “absurd” and said that he had been duped by rogue security forces who were trying to remove her from office, then after smearing her they killed him.
“They used him while he was alive, and then they needed him dead,” Fernández said.
The Iranian government has repeatedly denied any such involvement in the attack on the AMIA center.
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