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Argentinian president hits out at judiciary over rally for Alberto Nisman | |
(4 months later) | |
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, the Argentinian president, accused the judiciary on Saturday of launching a political battle after state lawyers organised a march to demand justice for a dead prosecutor who had been investigating her. | |
The protest, known as 18F, drew tens of thousands into the streets of Buenos Aires on Wednesday, a month after the state prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead in his apartment in mysterious circumstances. | |
Nisman had accused Fernández of plotting to cover up his inquiry into the 1994 bombing of a Jewish centre in Buenos Aires. | |
Commenting on the rally for the first time, Fernández said the march marked the politicisation of the judiciary. | |
“18F, the baptism by fire for the Judicial party,” Fernández wrote sarcastically in a statement shared on social media. | |
“The true political and institutional significance of the march was the public and now undeniable appearance of the Judicial party,” she said. | |
The protest, one of the biggest Fernández has faced in her seven years in power, was called by a group of state prosecutors and swiftly promoted by opposition parties. | |
The prosecutors had previously said the rally was to honour Nisman and was not politically motivated. | |
The group has frequently locked horns with Argentina’s leftwing government and complained of a culture of intimidation and meddling in the courts. | |
“It’s really as strange as a march for better government would be if called for by cabinet ministers,” Fernández said. | |
“18F was decidedly an opposition march, summoned by prosecutors and supported by judges and the whole spectrum of political opposition,” she said. | |
Officials said in the days leading up to the march that it was designed to destabilise the government. | |
Protesters said they were demanding an independent judiciary and an end to impunity for high-ranking officials. | |
Similar rallies were held on the same day in other cities in Argentina as well as in Chile, the US and Israel. | |
Nisman’s death has sent shockwaves through Argentina before October’s presidential elections, and plunged Fernández’s final year into turmoil. | |
Nisman had accused Iran of being behind the 1994 bombing and alleged that Fernández conspired with Tehran to whitewash his investigations in return for economic favours. | |
Iran has repeatedly denied the accusation. Fernández called it “absurd”, and said rogue state security agents who held a grudge against her had misled Nisman’s investigation and then killed him. |