MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

An intriguing Netflix's production, “The prosecutor, the president and the spy”

The main characters of the semi documentary are the former special prosecutor Nisman, who apparently had collected highly sensitive information on the Iran connection to AMIA attack

Netflix will be launching on January first a six-chapter film on one of the most intriguing criminal cases in recent Argentina history, still unsolved, which refers to the killing of former special prosecutor Alberto Nisman, and which was first categorized as suicide.

Under the heading of “The prosecutor, the president and the spy”, the film is directed by Justin Webster, who took some four years to complete it and demanded going through some one thousand hours of filming and recordings.

The main characters of the semi documentary are the former special prosecutor Nisman, who apparently had collected highly sensitive information on the Iran connection to one of Argentina's worst and deadliest terrorist attacks, on 18 July 1994, against a Jewish community organization, AMIA, in downtown Buenos Aires left dozens killed and hundreds injured, and was prepared to go public before a congressional committee.

The information apparently proved or had evidence of a connection between the Iran involvement in the AMIA attack, and later of an Iran/Argentina “cover up plot” between Teheran and the administration of president Cristina Fernandez.

However Nisman never made it to Congress because on 18 January 2015 he was found dead with a shot in the head at his apartment in Puerto Madero.

The other character in the film is obviously president Cristina Fernandez, and the very clumsy prosecutor and supporting police sent to the crime scene but which only contributed to further speculations about what really happened that night plus the fact that much evidence was deliberately trampled, as it was claimed at the time.

Finally the third character of the heading is the spy, working for Argentine state intelligence, Antonio Jaime Stiuso, who apparently had “real” evidence of what happened, but was reluctant to make statements to the prosecutor and police investigators of the case, went hiding for some time, later emerged in the United States saying he was scared to return to Argentina fearing for his life.

Webster has admitted it has been one of his most challenging and complicated works of his life, and in the film includes interviews with Viviana Fein, the first prosecutor in the Nisman case, with Oscar Parrilli, head of Argentine state intelligence and a man of complete confidence of Cristina Fernandez, Federal judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado, Nisman's ex wife.

From the very beginning of the investigation the theory that Nisman had taken his life was predominant, but Spy Stiuso in his erratic appearances pointed to a crime, “he was killed” and linked the death to Nisman's evidence leading to the AMIA bombing and later the Iran/Argentina Memorandum of Understanding. He later accused the government of then president Cristina Fernandez to deliberately obstruct the crime investigation.

However Spy Stiuso lawyer Santiago Blanco Bermudez, was later recorded stating that his client “did not have direct evidence of what happened, or testimony from the alleged perpetrators, but does have, given his experience, an interpretation of events leading to Nisman's death, motives and the reasons for the killing”.

In other words a most intriguing death and surrounding mystery, which has not been much clarity and faces a new turn. In effect during the Macri administration, Argentine Gendarmerie presented a detailed scientific report on why it was a homicide and not a suicide, but now with the incoming government under the influence of Cristina Fernandez, the recently named Security Minister, Sabina Frederic, has demanded a repeat of the Gendarmerie appraisal because she distrusts the findings.