The transcripts were made public by an Argentine judge on Tuesday night, as part of a 289-page criminal complaint written by Alberto Nisman, the special prosecutor investigating the attack. Mr. Nisman was found dead in his luxury apartment on Sunday, the night before he was to present his findings to Congress. But the intercepted telephone conversations he described before his death outline an elaborate effort to reward Argentina for shipping food to Iran — and for seeking to derail the investigation into a terrorist attack in the Argentine capital that killed 85 people. The phone conversations are believed to have been intercepted by Argentine intelligence officials. If proved accurate, the transcripts would show a concerted effort by representatives of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s government to shift suspicions away from Iran in order to gain access to Iranian markets and to ease Argentina’s energy troubles. The contacts came at a time when Iran was seeking to raise its profile in Latin America. In recent years, Iran has forged close ties with leftist governments in Venezuela and Bolivia, while also turning to large commodities producers like Brazil for food imports and as a counterweight to its isolation by the West over its nuclear program.
Posted on: Thu, 22 Jan 2015 04:04:58 +0000