BuUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Argentinian President Cristina Kirchner criticized lawmakers Saturday for participating in a massive march over the controversial death of a prosecutor, accusing them of joining the opposition to protest her administration.
An Estimated 300,000 people gathered last week to mark one month since the suspicious death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was found dead before he planned to accuse the Argentine president of a massive cover-up.
In a letter published on her personal website, Kirchner said the gathering was not a silent march to honor Nisman, but a rally coordinated by lawmakers against her government. She wrote the gathering was “decidedly an opposition march called by prosecutors and judges and supported by the entire political opposition.”
“You could see it live and direct, political leaders ridiculing, and protesters carrying signs with offensive and insulting messages against the government.” It involved “several members of a branch of government — the judiciary — against another branch: the Executive,” she added.
Nisman was found in his Buenos Aires apartment with a bullet through his head on January 18, the day before he was to go before a congressional hearing to air his finding that Kirchner and her foreign minister plotted to shield Iranian officials implicated in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish-Argentine charity federation.
Eighty-five people were killed and more than 300 injured in the attack, the deadliest in Argentina’s history — and one that has yet to be solved 21 years later.
Investigators initially said the 51-year-old’s death appeared to be suicide, though that theory is widely disbelieved in Argentina.
In her letter, Kircher also accused “big business” of supporting opposition members, and slammed some local media for what she called biased coverage of the march.
Kirchner last week slammed the rally as “golpista” — seeking to destabilize the government, and dismissed “conspiracies” surrounding Nismam’s death. Nisman’s ex-wife, Judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado, has rejected claims he killed himself and called for independent oversight of the probe into his death.
