Board confirms results of autopsy but Arroyo Salgado’s experts disagree with conclusion
After more than three weeks of heated debate, the board of coroners yesterday officially confirmed the results of the autopsy conducted on Alberto Nisman’s body, hours after he was found dead of a gunshot wound to the head in his apartment in the City neighbourhood of Puerto Madero.
The results, which were previewed by the Herald on Saturday, effectively contradict the hypothesis put forward by the AMIA special prosecutor’s ex-wife, San Isidro Federal Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado, who contends her former husband was murdered days after filing a criminal complaint against Cristina Fernández de Kirchner for allegedly seeking to whitewash the suspected Iranian involvement in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre.
The only two members of the board — made up of 15 medical experts — who disagreed with the conclusions were Osvaldo Raffo and Julio Ravioli, the forensic experts hired by Arroyo Salgado.
Raffo and Ravioli, were expected to file their opinion to the board of coroners on April 13, but they took longer and postponed their filing until April 15.
Their attitude infuriated Roberto Godoy, the head of the Supreme Court’s coroners, who also coordinated the medical board. According to sources, Godoy destined two pages to criticize the two experts for hampering the discussion.
Raffo and Ravioli decided not to take part in some of the meetings of the board when they were examining the footage of Nisman’s autopsy, which was seen by Fein as a new manoeuvre by Arroyo Salgado to delay the probe.
Arroyo Salgado
When Fein appointed Godoy to lead the board of coroners, Arroyo Salgado staunchly opposed the move by arguing that he was a psychiatrist and that, as a member of the Supreme Court’s body, his opinion could be biased.
Prosecutor Viviana Fein — in charge of determining the circumstances of Nisman’s death — will start analyzing the results of the final report today while she awaits the forensic brief. That document will likely be handed to the prosecutor next week.
Sources yesterday told the Herald that the coroners confirmed the time of death signed by medical doctor Gabriela Piroso from the Federal Police (PFA), who was the first one to examine the corpse on January 18 after Nisman’s mother and a bodyguard arrived at the flat on the 13th floor of the Le Parc II Tower.
When Nisman’s autopsy was conducted on January 19, the Supreme Court’s medical doctors confirmed that Nisman died a day earlier, possibly between noon and the first few hours of the afternoon. Nisman was set to meet his bodyguards on January 18 at 11.30am but according to the members of his security detail the AMIA prosecutor never answer ed the door. He did not collect the newspapers from the entrance and, according to the analysis of his personal computer, he surfed the Web on the morning of January 18.
However, Arroyo Salgado and her experts believe that Nisman was murdered on January 17, when IT expert Diego Lagomarsino visited him. According to Lagomarsino, Nisman told him to go to his flat to borrow a gun to protect his two daughters. “He feared fanatics,” Lagomarsino told the media. Lagomarsino went back to his house in Martínez and lent his boss a .22-calibre Bersa pistol, which was the gun that ended up killing Nisman.
For the experts hired by Arroyo Salgado, Nisman was killed on January 17 when Lagomarsino visited him reportedly to lend him the gun that killed him.
According to Arroyo Salgado, Nisman’s last connection to the messaging application WhatsApp was at about 8.30pm on January 17.
“Anyone who knew Alberto can be sure that the time he stopped answering his phone, was the time when he was killed,” the San Isidro federal judge has been heard saying.
The San Isidro federal judge has taken pains to link Lagomarsino with the mysterious death of her former husband. So far Fein has only charged him with lending a gun to a man who did not have his possession licence.
Arroyo Salgado has accused Lagomarsino of working for the secret services and she also reported the existence of a bank account he shared with Nisman in an US-based bank. The information also implicated her former mother-in-law, Sara Garfukel, and her sister-in-law, Sandra Nisman, who are being investigated for money-laundering by Federal Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral and federal prosecutor Juan Pedro Zoni.
Experts have found that Arroyo Salgado was right on one thing: there was no post-mortem spasm on her late former husband’s hand, as it had been previously indicated as a sign that he could have committed suicide.
“It means nothing,” a source told this newspaper. “But it indicates that Nisman agonized before dying.”
Spasm would be a clear sign that Nisman triggered the pistol. There was no trace of gunpowder on Nisman’s hand, which also helped to create a bigger mystery, which will have to be solved by Fein over the next few weeks.
Other tests
Forensic experts will also have to inform Fein about their findings next week. Sources said that they have not found evidence that a third party was present when Nisman died.
Blood stains do not indicate that there was another person in the bathroom and, according to sources, there is no indication that Nisman’s body could have been pulled, as Arroyo Salgado claims. Daniel Salcedo, a former Buenos Aires provincial police officer who works as a forensic expert for Nisman’s ex-wife, believes that Nisman had his knee on the floor when he was reportedly shot dead. However, sources who took part in the inspection at Nisman’s flat, told the Herald that the blood stains do not support that hypothesis.
Fein is expected to analyze the report filed by the board of coroners and the forensic brief in the next few weeks before issuing a resolution. Fein wants to determine whether her colleague committed suicide or was forced to do it or if he was murdered. But the evidence does not support the murder hypothesis so far.
Source: Buenos Aires Herald