MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Judge dismisses case against Cristina Fernandez for alleged Iran cover up

Judge Rafeca “believes the minimum conditions to launch a criminal investigation have not been met, based on what the prosecutor presented”

Argentine federal judge Daniel Rafecas on Thursday dismissed the case against President Cristina Fernandez, in which it was claimed she, together with other officials conspired to spare Iranian officials from prosecution over the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires.

 “The judge believes the minimum conditions to launch a criminal investigation have not been met, based on what the prosecutor presented,” the Judicial Information Centre (CIJ) said in a statement.

However Federal Prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita is expected to appeal the decision to discontinue the investigation.

Prosecutors had attempted to re-launch the case against Fernandez, following the mysterious death of their colleague Alberto Nisman. Nisman was pursuing the case himself when he was found shot dead in his apartment on January 18. The AMIA special prosecutor was due to testify the next day in a closed-door hearing with Congress over his claim.

President Fernandez has previously described the accusations as “absurd,” and said she is convinced Nisman's death was a killing carried out by disgruntled former intelligence agents, as part of a plot to discredit her and destabilize the Argentine government.

Following Nisman's death, Fernandez dissolved the country's intelligence service and announced plans to create a new agency. Argentina's Congress approved the law early on Wednesday evening, local time.

Nisman, 51, was appointed ten years ago by late Argentine President Nestor Kirchner to investigate the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center AMIA, in the capital Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured over 300.

In the week before his death, Nisman accused President Fernandez, Kirchner's widow, of back channel deals with Iran so as to avoid investigating the attack. The legal suit he filed accused Fernandez of working to absolve the Iranian officials accused of orchestrating the attack.

Four days before he was found dead in his apartment in the Buenos Aires City neighborhood of Puerto Madero, AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman accused President Fernández, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, lawmaker Andrés “Cuervo” Larroque and social leaders Luis D’Elía and Fernando Esteche of conducting secret negotiations to cover-up Iran’s alleged involvement in the attack that claimed the lives of 85 people and left hundreds injured.

Pollicita later went forward with the criminal complaint, claiming Argentina would receive unspecified trade benefits from the deal.

But on Thursday, Judge Daniel Rafecas said the documents Nisman filed failed to meet standards needed to open a formal court investigation. “None of the two hypotheses of a crime put forward by prosecutor Pollicita in his writ stand up to the minimum level of scrutiny,” Rafecas wrote in his ruling.

Iran has denied involvement in the 1994 attack.

The case has unsettled Fernandez's government. A week ago, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Buenos Aires in a silent march to demand justice.

Nisman's former wife, Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado, has called for the case to be referred to an international commission saying it had become too politicized domestically.