A U.S. forensic pathologist believes that the late Argentine special prosecutor Alberto Nisman likely was murdered.
“The evidence argues strongly and scientifically against it being a suicide,” Cyril Wecht said in an interview aired July 12 by Argentina television’s Channel 13. “It is much more likely that this was a homicide.”
Wecht has been president of the American Academy of Forensic Science and the American College of Legal Medicine, and has performed about 17,000 autopsies. He has consulted on several high-profile cases, including the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
At the request of the Argentine current events show “Periodismo para todos,” Wecht analyzed Nisman’s case photos, videos, studies and forensic reports. Interviewed from Pittsburgh, Wecht said that the position of the gun would have made it difficult for Nisman to shoot himself.
Forensic experts have differed on the cause of death. Many have said it will be difficult to establish one unified version of how Nisman died, with some experts believing it was suicide and others murder.
Prosecutor Viviana Fein has not yet released a final ruling.
On July 13, the New Yorker published a piece about Nisman’s death by Dexter Filkins, who interviewed Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner last week.
“During my interview with Kirchner, she seemed unnerved by talking about Nisman’s death,” Filkins wrote. “When I raised the question of whether she’d had him killed, she blurted, “No!,” and then handed me a printout of the statement that she’d written for her website. She seemed mostly disturbed by the damage that Nisman’s death was doing to her reputation.”
Nisman was found shot to death in January in his Buenos Aires apartment hours before he was to present his evidence on an alleged government cover-up, that included Kirchner, of Iran’s role in the deadly 1994 attack on the Buenos Aires Jewish center.
Argentine courts dismissed Nisman’s complaint. — jta