News Digest

Argentina to disband intelligence service after prosecutor death

President Cristina Kirchner said that she would disband Argentina’s intelligence service, after a prosecutor was found dead just hours before he was to make explosive allegations against her in Congress. In a TV address on Monday, Kirchner said she would draft a bill to set up a new body. Alberto Nisman, 51, was found in his Buenos Aires home with a gunshot wound to the head on January 18, the day before he was to go before a congressional hearing to accuse Kirchner of obstructing his investigation into a 1994 bombing at a Jewish charities federation office. She denies the claims and says Nisman’s death - which initially was suspected to be a suicide - was a plot to discredit her.

The plan is to dissolve the Intelligence Secretariat, and create a Federal Intelligence Agency.

President Cristina Kirchner

The 1994 attack, which killed 85 people, has never been solved. Nisman had accused Kirchner and her foreign minister Hector Timerman of shielding Iranian officials implicated in the bombing of the Argentine-Jewish Mutual Association. The leadership of the new agency will be chosen by the president but subject to Senate approval. Kirchner had removed the leadership of the current intelligence service as recently as December. She said she would send her intelligence system reform bill to Congress before she leaves for China next week, and swiftly scheduled special congressional sessions for it to be taken up.