Credit: JUAN MABROMATA / AFP via Getty Images
(CNN Spanish) -
Six years after the death of the prosecutor in the AMIA case Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor's office investigating his death is seeking 89 agents and former intelligence agents from Argentina to testify as witnesses to explain an unusual "explosion of calls" that led the the day Nisman died at central locations for the investigation, a source with direct access to the file informed CNN.
Prosecutor Eduardo Taiano already has the report made by a special division of the Federal Police with the intermingling of calls from the phones of these members and former members of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI) on January 18, 2015, on which he will base the interrogations, said the source consulted.
In the call crossings, the investigators also included telephones in the names of members of the then Executive Power and members of the security forces.
In total, about 200 phones were analyzed, the source explained.
For the moment, they will only cite those related to the AFI.
The summons will begin to be carried out from February, confirmed in the prosecution in charge of Taiano, when the suspension of activities of the judicial fair ends.
Taking the statements could take at least a year, estimated the source consulted.
Currently, the investigators are in the process of locating the agents and former agents to notify them of the subpoenas, an official source from an agency that collaborates in that process also confirmed.
MIRA: Pachter: What happened with Nisman was a murder and not a suicide, as they try to impose for political interests
Some of them no longer serve in the AFI, added both the official and judicial sources.
However, all would be covered by the secrecy imposed by the Intelligence Law, so the prosecution must require the authorities to relieve them of said legal obligation to testify, a source from the Executive confirmed to CNN.
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The prosecution wants the agents and ex-agents to explain why they were in the vicinity of the Nisman apartment and other key locations for the investigation, and what they spoke in certain telephone conversations on January 18, 2015, the source with direct access to the file detailed. .
Nisman was in charge of the AMIA fiscal unit and was investigating the 1994 attack on the headquarters of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), which claimed the lives of 85 people.
It was the worst terrorist attack in the country.
The week before his death, Nisman had filed a criminal complaint against the then president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, for the alleged cover-up of those accused of ordering that attack, through the signing of the 2013 Memorandum of Understanding with Iran.
MORE: What was Nisman like according to his acquaintances?
The current vice president has always denied any attempt to cover up the Iranian defendants in the court case and maintains that the agreement with Iran sought that those named finally testify before the Argentine Justice.
The Iranians, for their part, have denied their involvement in the attack.
There are two contradictory investigations into the death of the prosecutor.
The first led to the suicide hypothesis, based on official expert opinions and reports from an Interdisciplinary Board of doctors and experts.
The second suggests that, according to an expert opinion of the National Gendarmerie, Nisman was assassinated.
Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman photographed in Buenos Aires on May 20, 2009. Credit: JUAN MABROMATA / AFP via Getty Images
"Explosion of calls"
On the night of Sunday, January 18, 2015, Nisman was found dead in the apartment that he lived in in the Torre Le Parc building, in the exclusive neighborhood of Puerto Madero, in Buenos Aires.
During the day, from 9:23 a.m. to 11:17 p.m., there were at least 60 telephone crossings between directors of the Federal Intelligence Agency (AFI), executive branch officials and former intelligence agents, according to the source with direct access. to the file consulted by CNN.
The prosecution maintains that this intensity of crusade calls was unprecedented, the source added.
From those 60 crossings, the analysis was extended to other telephones that communicated with the first, until reaching the identification of the 89 agents and ex-agents, after crossing two variables.
On the one hand, which mobile phones were located in the vicinity of certain antennas on the day of Nisman's death, such as the one closest to the department where the prosecutor was found dead, the AFI headquarters and other locations determined with geolocation.
A second variable was the ownership of those phones, explained the source of the case.
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Based on that search and with requests for information on ownership and designation of mobile phones at the AFI, the agents and ex-agents who carried out this “explosion of calls” were identified, as the prosecution calls it, according to the source of the file.
The analysis also includes the crossings of calls and geolocations throughout 2014, that is, up to a year before the death of Nisman, to establish whether the locations and calls that the intelligence service members maintained with each other and with members of the Executive and of security forces were repeated at some other time.
The list of 89 agents and former intelligence members who must testify ranges from former AFI executives to street agents, confirmed the source of the court case.
The prosecution will ask Israel to make a testimonial by videoconference and, in the event that this possibility is denied, it will send a list of questions to the potential witness, CNN learned from a direct source with knowledge of the file.
Defense and plaintiff attorneys may include questions.
Some 25,000 photos from the security cameras of the building where Nisman lived and the surroundings are also analyzed to identify suspicious people or cars, added the source consulted.
Alberto Nisman Case of Nisman
