Judge rejects cover-up case against Argentine president

An Argentine judge on Thursday dismissed accusations that President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner conspired to cover up Iran's alleged involvement in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center.

Judge Daniel Rafecas said the documents originally filed by the late prosecutor Alberto Nisman — who died under mysterious circumstances after accusing Fernández of protecting Iranians officials — failed to meet standards needed to open a formal court investigation.

"I dismiss the case because no crime was committed," Rafecas said in a statement.

Prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita renewed Nisman's investigation into whether Fernández impeded the probe into the bombing in order to put through a grains-for-oil deal with Tehran.

Fernández called the claims “absurd.” But the scandal over the original claim by Nisman, and his death four days later, raised long-festering questions about the integrity of Argentina’s justice system.

Pollicita is expected to appeal the decision by Rafecas to discontinue the investigation into the two-term leader, who is constitutionally barred from running for a third term in October's general election.

Nisman was found with a fatal gunshot wound to the head in his bathroom on Jan. 18, four days after filing a report accusing Iran of ordering the attack via Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and alleging that Fernández was trying to shield Iranian officials from prosecution in exchange for oil.

Since his death, initially labeled a suicide, suspicion has fallen on Fernández's government of orchestrating Nisman's murder. The president has suggested the prosecutor was manipulated by disgruntled former intelligence agents, who then killed him in an attempt to smear Fernández’s reputation.

The long-unsolved bombing at the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association killed 85 people and wounded 300.

In other developments on Thursday, Argentina's Congress, voting along party lines, approved a law overhauling an intelligence agency that has come under fire from Fernández and opposition leaders.

The measure replaces the SI Intelligence Secretariat, which had already been ensnared in a scandal involving wiretaps carried out to extort judges, prosecutors and businessmen. The new intelligence service will be called the Federal Intelligence Agency.

But opposition lawmakers panned the measure as a tool to divert attention from Nisman’s mysterious death. And Fernández’s measure, they say, does nothing to keep the new agency from committing the same irregularities that took place at the SI.

“This is a smokescreen that will not resolve anything,” legislator Manuel Garrido, of the social democratic Radical Civic Union Party, told local media. "The most important issue is the lack of oversight."

"What worries us is that there has not been, nor will there be proper control" over a range of areas including wiretaps, Garrido said. 

Al Jazeera and wire services