Draft warrant to arrest Argentine president found at home of dead prosecutor

Investigators examining the death of a prosecutor who accused Argentine President Cristina Fernandez of agreeing to shield the alleged masterminds of a 1994 terror bombing said they have found a draft document he wrote requesting her arrest.

Chief investigator Viviana Fein said Tuesday the draft detention request was found in a trash bin of the apartment where Alberto Nisman’s body was discovered on January 18. It was not included in a complaint Nisman had filed in federal court days earlier.

“To formally go after a sitting president like this, especially somebody like Cristina, is a huge deal,” said James Cooper, professor at California Western School of Law and an expert on legal reform in Latin America. “It makes you wonder if Fein is getting pressure not to press the case further?”

Nisman was found dead of a gunshot wound in his bathroom hours before he was to appear in Congress to detail his allegations that Fernandez agreed to protect those responsible for the 1994 bombing of Buenos Aires’ largest Jewish community centre. The attack, which killed 85 people, remains unsolved. Fernandez has dismissed the allegations against her.

Fein at first denied the existence of the document requesting the president’s arrest after Argentina’s Clarin newspaper published an article about it on Sunday. Cabinet chief Jorge Capitanich ripped up the article in front of reporters on Monday and said it was a lie produced by the “opposition media.”

But Clarin then published a copy of the draft, which was dated from June 2014. It said Nisman also had considered requesting arrest orders against Fernandez’s foreign minister, Hector Timerman, and other officials in the government.