Argentine president announces major reform of intelligence body

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has announced an in-depth reform of the Intelligence Secretariat with the creation of a federal agency, and described prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s complaint of covering-up terrorist activities as absurd in her first public appearance after his death.

In a nationwide broadcast, Fernandez, who appeared in a wheelchair and dressed entirely in white, linked the death of Nisman with the agreement signed with Iran in 2013 and the bomb attack against the AMIA Jewish centre in Buenos Aires, which left 85 people dead 20 years ago.

The bombing still remains unsolved although from the beginning it was suspected that the Lebanese Shia group, Hezbollah, carried out the attack at the behest of Iran.

For an hour, the president attempted to dismantle the arguments of Nisman’s complaint and spoke in detail about the bill that she would send to parliament to dissolve the Intelligence Secretariat and replace it by a federal agency.

The announcement comes in the midst of an unprecedented political storm with Fernandez linking the death of Nisman to a conspiracy to destabilise the government and point directly to recently fired intelligence officers.

According to Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner , the Intelligence Secretariat “bombed” the agreement reached with Iran in 2013 which would have sped up the investigation into the AMIA bomb attack since it facilitated the interrogation of suspects in Iran.