Beyond puzzling over the circumstances, is there any response the U.S. can make to the sudden death this past weekend of Argentine special prosecutor Alberto Nisman?
Nisman
spent the past decade seeking justice for the victims of the 1994 terrorist
bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community center, which killed 85 people and
wounded many more. Nisman compiled a massive case, accusing Iran and its
Lebanese terrorist affiliate, Hezbollah, of the attack. He indicted a member of
Hezbollah and a number of former high-ranking Iranians officials. And he found
himself increasingly at cross-purposes with the machinations of Argentina’s
President Cristina Kirchner.
Last
week, Nisman filed a criminal complaint almost 300 pages long, accusing
Kirchner, her foreign minister Hector Timerman, and a number of others, of
orchestrating a cover-up of Iran’s responsibility for the 1994 attack. A
summary of the complaint, sent out last week by Nisman’s office, accused
Kirchner of secretly cutting a deal with Iran to concoct a story that would
exonerate Iran and its fugitives from the 1994 bombing, thus opening the way
for Argentina to trade grain for Iranian oil, at the cost of “sacrificing a
lengthy and legitimate quest for justice.”
Nisman
was due to testify Monday to Argentina’s Congress about his allegations. He
never made it. On the eve of his testimony, the 51-year-old Nisman was found
dead in his Buenos Aires apartment, shot in the head.
Argentine
officials swiftly declared that Nisman’s death looked like suicide. There’s
plenty of skepticism about that. But with the case under Argentine
jurisdiction, there may be little that Americans watching from afar can do. It
is telling, perhaps, that even when Nisman was alive, the U.S. couldn’t do much
on his behalf. In 2013, U.S. lawmakers invited Nisman to come to Washington, to
testify about his findings at a House hearing on “Threat to the Homeland:
Iran’s extending influence in the Western Hemishere.” Nisman wanted to go
testify. But Argentina’s chief public prosecutor denied him permission, on
grounds that it had nothing to do with the mission of the Argentine attorney
general’s office.
At
the hearing, panel chairman Rep. Jeff Duncan expressed his regret that Nisman
could not come. Duncan noted that based on information that omitted Nisman’s
findings, the State Department had recently reported that Iranian influence in
Latin America and the Caribbean was “waning.” Duncan added: “In stark contrast
to the State Department’s assessment, Nisman’s investigation revealed that Iran
has infiltrated for decades large regions of Latin America through the
establishment of clandestine intelligence stations and is ready to exploit its
position to ‘execute terrorist attacks when the Iranian regime decides to do
so.’ “
What
America can do — and should do — is pay much closer heed to Nisman’s urgent
warnings. For years, while laboring at an investigation that amassed more than
a million pages of documents, he sounded the alarm over Iranian terror networks
which he found extended way beyond Argentina — and in some cases all the way to
the U.S.
Nisman’s
investigation began with the Buenos Aires bombing, also known as the AMIA case
(AMIA being the Spanish acronym for the Argentina Israelite Mutual
Association). But as he dug deeper, he found that the techniques Iran used to
infiltrate agents into Argentina and set the stage for the Buenos Aires attack
were part of a network that was replicating itself in such countries as Brazil,
Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and Guyana.
The Guyana network had a major link to the man alleged by Nisman to be the main
architect on the ground of the Buenos Aires AMIA bombing, the Iranian embassy’s
cultural attache at the time, Mohsen Rabbani. The Guyana network also become
involved in a 2007 terrorist plot in the U.S. — foiled in time by U.S.
authorities — to blow up fuel lines and tanks at New York’s John F. Kennedy
Airport. The man in the middle was a former member of the Guyana parliament,
Abdul Kadir, who in 2010 was convicted in Brooklyn federal court of conspiring
to commit a terrorist attack at JFK Airport, and sentenced to life in prison.
Nisman,
in a 2013 indictment, as summarized in English by his office, described Rabbani
as an important Iranian agent not only for the AMIA bombing, but as a pivotal
figure in a general Iranian scheme of “infiltrating Latin-American countries”
and “building local clandestine intelligence stations designed to sponsor,
foster and execute terrorist attacks.” In detail, citing Iranian officials
themselves, Nisman explained how this is part of Iran’s methods meant to
“export the Islamic revolution.”
Nisman
visited the U.S. a number of times during the many years of his investigation,
and in March, 2009, I had the first of several chances to interview him in
person. We met at a cafe in lower Manhattan. He had just come from talking with
New York federal prosecutors about what he described as common concerns in
investigating terrorist attacks. He was full of energy; young, dapper, wearing
a red and silver tie, with a tie pin. He spoke some English, but was making the
rounds with the help of an interpreter. I asked him if he had any worries about
his own security. He replied that if he focused on that, he couldn’t do his
job.
Over
coffee, he detailed how the initial investigation into the 1994 AMIA bombing
had been a fraud, and when he was assigned to the case in 2004 he had started
all over again, working with a team of 40 people. He said that after the first
two years of work, they had been able to prove that “the attack was organized,
perpetrated and paid for by the higher authorities of Iran.” The decision to
carry out the bombing, he said, was “made almost a year before the attack” — in
1993, in Iran.
He
said his investigation had uncovered evidence that back in the 1980s, shortly
after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, Tehran’s regime had targeted Argentina as
its main point of entry into Latin America. He said there were big two
attractions for the Iranian regime: “Anti-semitism is part of the culture,” and
Argentina in those days was willing to provide Iran with some nuclear
technology. It was when Argentina, under pressure from the U.S., became less
forthcoming on nuclear matters that Iran turned to terrorist attack.
He
said that though many Iranians were sent as secret agents, they were assigned
to particular ways of life, to settle in. “Some were just taxi drivers. Others
went to university, especially in medicine.” He noted that medicine is a
long-term career, and in Argentina, with free education, you could be a student
for life. Still others came as businessmen. “These businesses did not sell any
products, but they had lots of employees” he added.
Nisman
also warned that when Iran’s regime is planning operations in a country, it
uses the Iranian embassy as a spy center. That may sound unsurprising. But with
Iran fielding a large diplomatic mission to the United Nations in New York, as
well as a large Iranian Interests Section inside the Pakistan Embassy in
Washington, Nisman’s observation deserves wide attention in the U.S. —
especially in light of some items in testimony to Congress on March, 2012, by
Mitchell D. Silber, former director of intelligence for the New York City
Police Department. Silber in his written testimony stated: “We believe this is
neither an idle nor a new threat. Between 2002 and 2010, the NYPD and federal
authorities detected at least six events involving Iranian diplomatic personnel
that we struggle to categorize as anything other than hostile reconnaissance of
New York City.”
Silber
then detailed half a dozen episodes involving Iranian diplomatic personnel
caught photographing or videotaping railroad tracks inside Grand Central
Station, subway tracks, bridges and the landing pad of the Wall Street
heliport.
Iran, for its part, has repeatedly denied Nisman’s allegations, saying it is
innocent of any involvement in the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires. A typical
statement, part of a series, can be found in a letter dated Oct. 6, 2010, from
Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., to the president of the U.N. General Assembly.
The ambassador, at some length, denounces Nisman’s investigation as “entirely
faulty”; then adds that Iran stands ready, nonetheless, “to hold a constructive
dialogue with the Argentine Government in a spirit of mutual respect in order
to develop a clear understanding of each other’s positions, and seeks to find
viable solutions for the misunderstandings arising from this case.”
Argentina
no longer has Alberto Nisman to testify to what that jargon might mean. But
with his courage and years of toil in quest of justice, he has bequeathed us
all a warning about where it goes.
Ms.
Rosett is journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies,
and heads its Investigative Reporting Project.