# Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was assassinated to silence his cover-up case, not lost to suicide

**No verdict.** Two questions have to be kept apart. Whether Nisman died by suicide or homicide is one; who killed him and why, if it was homicide, is the other. On the first, the official record has moved decisively toward homicide: a 2017 Gendarmerie forensic report and a 2018 federal appeals court both concluded he was murdered, and a federal court reaffirmed that finding around the tenth anniversary in 2025. On the second, nothing is settled. No one has been convicted of his death, no killer has been identified, and the specific claim that powerful officials ordered him silenced remains an accusation, not a proven fact. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, whom Nisman's complaint targeted, denies any involvement and has never been charged, let alone convicted, in connection with his death.

Category: Unsolved Crimes & Disappearances · Era: 2010s · First circulated: Within hours of the body's discovery on 18 January 2015, and hardening as forensic disputes and later homicide rulings emerged from 2017 onward · Believed by: The homicide finding is now the official Argentine judicial position, affirmed by an appeals court and by Argentina's current government. That Nisman was deliberately assassinated on someone's orders is widely suspected across Argentine politics and abroad, but it has never been proven or attached to a named author.
URL: https://theconspiratory.com/theory/alberto-nisman-death

## Summary
In the early hours of 18 January 2015, the Argentine federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found shot dead in his Puerto Madero apartment in Buenos Aires. He was 51. He was due the next day to tell a congressional committee that then-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner and members of her government had conspired to cover up Iran's alleged role in the 1994 AMIA Jewish-center bombing. The timing was so stark that few in Argentina ever accepted the earliest framing of the death as a possible suicide. Over the following years the forensic picture shifted: a 2017 Gendarmerie report and a 2018 appeals court concluded he had been murdered, a finding a federal court reaffirmed in 2025. Yet more than a decade on, no one has been convicted, no killer has been named, and the motive and any chain of command remain unresolved. This file separates what the record documents, the death, the disputed forensics, and the eventual homicide rulings, from the rated claim: that Nisman was assassinated to silence him and that powerful officials were behind or concealed it.

## The claim
That Alberto Nisman did not take his own life but was assassinated, killed deliberately to stop him from testifying about his allegation that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's government had conspired to shield Iran over the AMIA bombing; and, in the strongest version, that powerful officials ordered the killing or later covered it up.

## Origin and timeline
- 2013-01: Argentina and Iran sign a Memorandum of Understanding creating a joint commission to question the Iranian suspects in the 1994 AMIA bombing, the attack Nisman had spent years investigating. Critics, including Jewish community bodies, denounce the pact as a shield for the accused; an Argentine court later declares it unconstitutional.
- 2015-01-14: Nisman files a roughly 300-page criminal complaint accusing President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, and others of conspiring to cover up Iran's alleged role in the bombing in exchange for trade. He is summoned to present the accusation to a congressional committee on 19 January.
- 2015-01-18: Nisman is found shot dead in the bathroom of his apartment in the Le Parc tower in Puerto Madero, a .22 calibre pistol beside him. The weapon belonged to Diego Lagomarsino, an IT technician who worked with him and who says Nisman had asked to borrow it. The death, hours before the scheduled testimony, is initially treated as a possible suicide.
- 2015-03-05: A forensic team commissioned by Nisman's ex-wife, federal judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado, publicly concludes he was murdered, disputing the suicide hypothesis and the handling of the scene. The finding is a privately commissioned expert opinion, not yet an official ruling, but it fuels national doubt about the suicide framing.
- 2017-09: The Gendarmeria Nacional (border guard) delivers a lengthy forensic report concluding that Nisman was the victim of a homicide, citing the trajectory of the shot, the absence of gunpowder residue on his hands, signs consistent with a struggle, and traces of the anaesthetic ketamine in his body. Federal prosecutor Eduardo Taiano moves to reclassify the case as a homicide.
- 2017-12: Federal judge Julian Ercolini ratifies the presumption of homicide, formally treating the death as a murder rather than a suicide. No perpetrator is named as having pulled the trigger.
- 2018-06-02: A federal appeals court affirms the lower-court finding, ruling out suicide and endorsing the homicide hypothesis. Lagomarsino is charged as an accessory and several of Nisman's assigned bodyguards are also charged over their conduct. None is convicted of killing him; the identity of any shooter remains open.
- 2021-2024: The parallel memorandum cover-up case against Fernandez de Kirchner swings through the courts: a federal tribunal dismisses it as no crime in 2021, an appeals chamber revives it, and in December 2024 the Supreme Court clears the way for her to stand trial. She denies wrongdoing throughout. This case concerns the alleged cover-up, not Nisman's death.
- 2025-01: Around the tenth anniversary of the death, a federal court investigation reaffirms that Nisman was murdered because of his AMIA work, and Argentina's government publicly describes the death as a murder. Fernandez de Kirchner's allies continue to characterise it as a suicide. No one has been convicted, and no killer has been identified.

## The evidence, claim by claim
- Claim: Nisman was found shot dead the day before he was to testify against the president.
  Evidence: This is documented and uncontested. Nisman was found dead of a gunshot wound in his Puerto Madero apartment on 18 January 2015, hours before he was scheduled to present his cover-up accusation to a congressional committee on 19 January. He had filed the complaint against Fernandez de Kirchner and others four days earlier. The circumstances and timing are a matter of record.
- Claim: The death was really a suicide, as the earliest framing suggested.
  Evidence: This is the reading the official record has moved away from. The case was initially handled as a possible suicide, and some allies of the former president still call it that. But a privately commissioned forensic team concluded homicide in 2015, the Gendarmeria's 2017 report found the physical evidence pointed to murder, and in 2018 a federal appeals court ruled out suicide. Suicide is now the minority position, contradicted by the later official findings.
- Claim: Nisman was murdered, not lost to suicide.
  Evidence: This is now the official finding, though its authors are unknown. The 2017 Gendarmeria report cited the shot's trajectory, the lack of gunpowder residue on Nisman's hands, and traces of ketamine in his body; a judge ratified the homicide presumption, an appeals court affirmed it in 2018, and a federal court reaffirmed it in 2025. What the rulings establish is that he was killed. They do not establish by whom, which is a separate and still-open question.
- Claim: Powerful officials ordered Nisman killed to silence his cover-up case.
  Evidence: This is the heart of the conspiracy claim, and it is unproven. No court has identified who killed Nisman or on whose orders, and no official has been charged, let alone convicted, with his death. Fernandez de Kirchner, the target of his complaint, denies any involvement. The suggestive timing is real and the homicide finding is official, but the leap from those facts to a named author or a proven order has never been made in law, and this file will not make it.
- Claim: The cover-up Nisman alleged has itself been proven, which confirms the motive to kill him.
  Evidence: That overstates the record. Nisman's 2015 complaint accused the government of a cover-up via the 2013 Iran memorandum, and that case has swung through the Argentine courts (dismissed as no crime in 2021, then revived, with the Supreme Court sending Fernandez de Kirchner to trial in 2024). But there is no final conviction, she denies the charge, and the memorandum case is legally distinct from the question of who killed him. A contested, still-unresolved cover-up allegation is not proof of a motive for murder.
- Claim: The lending of the fatal weapon by an associate proves an inside plot.
  Evidence: It is a genuine and troubling feature of the case, but it proves less than it seems. The pistol belonged to Diego Lagomarsino, who worked with Nisman and says the prosecutor asked to borrow it, citing fears for his family's safety. Lagomarsino was charged as an accessory, and several bodyguards were charged over their conduct, but none has been convicted of the killing. The gun's provenance deepens the mystery; it does not, by itself, establish who fired it or why.

## Why people believe it
- The timing was almost unbearably suggestive. A prosecutor is found shot the night before he is to accuse a sitting president of a cover-up. Even people wary of conspiracy theories struggle to read that sequence as coincidence, and the later homicide rulings only sharpened the sense that he was silenced.
- The state's own account was unstable. A death first handled as a possible suicide was later ruled a homicide by forensic investigators and an appeals court. When official findings reverse this dramatically, the public reasonably concludes the first version was wrong, or worse, and stops trusting any tidy explanation.
- The physical evidence genuinely pointed away from suicide. Traces of ketamine, no gunpowder residue on his hands, and a disputed shot trajectory are the kinds of concrete anomalies that turn suspicion into conviction, and they came from an official body, not a fringe blogger.
- The case sat on top of a real, documented history of a sabotaged AMIA investigation. In a country where courts have separately convicted officials of derailing the bombing probe, the belief that another inconvenient investigator was eliminated does not feel far-fetched.
- No one has ever been held to account. More than a decade on, with no conviction and no named killer, an unfilled void invites the strongest explanation, and a targeted assassination is a more satisfying answer to a national trauma than an unsolved death.

## Open questions
- Who killed Alberto Nisman, and on whose orders, has never been established. The homicide finding tells us he was killed; it does not tell us by whom or why, and that gap is the largest hole in the entire case.
- How the fatal weapon came to be in the apartment, and what happened in the hours before the death, remains only partly reconstructed. Charges against an associate and bodyguards have not produced a conviction or a coherent, court-tested account of the killing itself.
- The relationship between Nisman's death and the cover-up he alleged is assumed by many but proven by none. The memorandum case against Fernandez de Kirchner is legally separate, still unresolved, and denied by her, so any causal link to his death is inference, not finding.
- Why the earliest official handling leaned toward suicide, despite forensic features later read as homicide, has never been fully explained, and that early framing shaped, and arguably degraded, everything the investigation could recover afterward.

## Sources
- Death of Alberto Nisman, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Alberto_Nisman
- Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman was 'murdered', Al Jazeera (2015): https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/3/5/argentine-prosecutor-alberto-nisman-was-murdered
- Official report finds death of AMIA prosecutor Alberto Nisman was murder, not suicide, Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) (2017): https://www.jta.org/2017/09/24/news-opinion/world/report-amia-prosecutor-alberto-nisman-was-murdered-suspect-identified
- Crusading Argentina prosecutor Alberto Nisman was murdered, a new probe finds, NBC News (2017): https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/new-investigation-argentina-says-prosecutor-alberto-nisman-was-murdered-n817886
- Argentine prosecutor's death ruled a murder, CNN (2017): https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/26/americas/argentina-alberto-nisman-murder-ruling/index.html
- Court rules Nisman was murdered, charges former IT specialist Lagomarsino as 'accessory', Buenos Aires Times (2018): https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/court-rules-nisman-was-murdered-charges-former-it-specialist-lagomarsino-as-accessory.phtml
- Supreme Court sends Fernandez de Kirchner to trial for Iran memorandum, Buenos Aires Times (2024): https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/supreme-court-sends-cristina-fernandez-de-kirchner-to-trial-for-iran-memorandum.phtml
- A decade on, prosecutors conclude Alberto Nisman was killed, Buenos Aires Times (2025): https://www.batimes.com.ar/news/argentina/a-decade-on-prosecutors-conclude-alberto-nisman-was-killed.phtml
- Argentine federal court confirms AMIA prosecutor was murdered, The Times of Israel (2025): https://www.timesofisrael.com/argentine-federal-court-confirms-amia-prosecutor-was-murdered/

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