Nisman's witch-hunt against Cristina Fernández goes forward

An Argentine prosecutor is proceeding with the ludicrous charges against President Cristina Fernández brought originally against her by the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman: Prosecutor to question Argentine president in alleged bomb plot cover-up Aljazeera America 02/13/2015

Elias Groll also reports on this story in Prosecutor Forwards Case Against Kirchner in Probe of Bombing Cover-Up Foreign Policy 02/13/2015:

The Argentine government reacted angrily to the development Friday. It denied that leaders colluded with Iran to sabotage an investigation into who carried out an attack that left 85 people dead, and ranks as the worst act of terrorism in Argentina’s history.

“This is an active judicial coup,” said cabinet chief Jorge Capitanich, according to the Guardian. “There is no proof at all. The people have to know that this is a vulgar lie, an enormous press operation.”

Presidential spokesman Anibal Fernández called Friday’s developments a “clear maneuver to destabilize democracy.”

Those descriptions are correct. In this article, they appear as the last three paragraphs. "This side says, the other side says" just doesn't do it for a story like this.

Economics Minister Axel Kicillof, who is kind of the Yanis Varoufakis of Argentina, publicly rejected one of the key claims in Nisman's charge (Kicillof blasts Nisman’s ‘economic’ complaint Buenos Aires Herald 02/16/2015):

One of Nisman’s key accusations against the Fernández de Kirchner administration was that the president and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman had agreed to lift Interpol’s arrest warrants against the Iranian officials accused of organizing the AMIA bombing in exchange for access to Iranian oil — which in turn would be traded for locally produced grains.

“The complaint suggests that all the alleged diplomatic manoeuvres the government adopted were made so they could exchange something that we don’t have — grains, since they aren’t owned by the state — for something we don’t need — crude oil,” Kicillof said. “It’s ridiculous.”

The Economy minister stressed that for this reason the complaint by the late prosecutor, filed some days before he was found dead in his Puerto Madero apartment building, was “economic nonsense.”

“It isn’t possible for Argentina to purchase oil from Iran because its crude oil has a high sulphur content, a type of oil which can’t be refined by the country’s oil refineries,” Kicillof said.

As for the grain argument, he said suggesting such a move by the national government was ridiculous because grains are owned by exporters and farm owners.

“The case doesn’t appear to have any merit, in anything that’s said,” Kicillof stressed, pointing out that after the 2013 signing of the Memorandum of Understanding with Iran, commercial relations with the Asian country deteriorated — so if that was the objective, it was a complete failure.