MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Argentine Jewish community asks Washington to reveal whereabouts of former spymaster

Allegedly AMIA delegates hand-delivered a letter to US Ambassador Mamet, asking that Washington turn over information relating to “Jaime” Stiuso

The Argentine Jewish community has requested that the United States reveal the whereabouts of their country’s former spymaster – who reportedly fled to Miami in February following the shooting death of a prosecutor investigating the 1994 car bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and injured hundreds.

 According to a report by Telam, the government's official news agency, representatives of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina, AMIA, hand-delivered a letter to US Ambassador Noah Mamet, asking that Washington turn over information relating to Antonio “Jaime” Stiuso, who is wanted for questioning by Argentina's government. Such a request is “consistent with our ongoing concern in the search for memory, truth and justice for the terrorist attack” against AMIA, the letter declared.

Stiuso is believed to have worked closely with prosecutor Alberto Nisman, the government prosecutor who had been tasked with looking into the July 1994 bombing. Nisman was found dead in his apartment earlier this year, only hours before he was due to testify to Congress regarding allegations that President Cristina Fernández had attempted to interfere with his investigation.

Last year an Argentine court struck down as unconstitutional an agreement with Iran for the formation of a joint Truth Commission to investigate the bombing. Many believe that the Iranians played a role in the planning of the bombing, and Argentine courts have previously called for the extradition of several Iranians suspected of involvement in the attack.

Interpol in Brazil confirmed Stiuso took a flight from that country to the United State on February 19, only a few hours after it had been confirmed that he had testified before Viviana Fein, the prosecutor in charge of the investigation into the mysterious death of Nisman.

Stiuso departed from the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre to Miami at 12.05 pm in an American Airlines flight, using an Italian passport, the C5N news channel reported. The day before, Fein had confirmed Stiuso had testified in the Nisman case. The then AMIA special prosecutor was found dead with a gunshot to his head back in January in his Buenos Aires City apartment.

Cristina Fernandez and her ministers say that Stiuso duped Nisman into fabricating unfounded allegations to destabilize the government and then needed him dead, and have previously questioned whether the spy chief was working for the United States.

Last month the results of new tests on the gun believed to have killed Alberto Nisman appear to negate the possibility that AMIA special prosecutor committed suicide. The new tests seem to support the theory that someone else shot Nisman and cleaned away the incriminating handprints.