Argentina President Cristina de Fernandez Kirchner

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This is a bombshell. Draft arrest warrants for Argentina President Cristina de Fernandez Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman  found in trash at the home of late  Prosecutor Alberto Nisman’s home in Buenos Aires.  Meanwhile President Kirchner is off in China. What will be her reception upon return?

New York Times: Draft of Arrest Warrant for Argentine President Found at Dead Prosecutor’s Home

BUENOS AIRES — Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor whose mysterious death has gripped Argentina, had drafted a warrant for the arrest of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, accusing her of trying to shield Iranian officials from responsibility in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center here, the lead investigator into his death said on Tuesday.

The 26-page document, which was found in the garbage at Mr. Nisman’s apartment, also requested the arrest of Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister. Both Mrs. Kirchner and Mr. Timerman have repeatedly denied Mr. Nisman’s accusation that they tried to reach a secret deal with Iran to lift international arrest warrants for Iranian officials wanted in connection with the bombing.

The new revelation that Mr. Nisman had drafted arrest warrants for the president and the foreign minister further illustrates the heightened tensions between him and the government before he was found dead on Jan. 18 at his apartment with a gunshot wound to his head. He had been scheduled the next day to provide details before Congress about his accusations against Mrs. Kirchner.

“It would have provoked a crisis without precedents in Argentina,” said Sergio Berensztein, a political analyst, about the impact of the warrants if they had been issued. He acknowledged that previous legal cases had shaken Argentina’s political establishment, but he emphasized that this case involved a request to arrest a sitting president.

“It would have been a scandal on a level previously unseen,” Mr. Berensztein said.

Mrs. Kirchner, who is on a visit to China, issued a stream of updates on Twitter about strengthening ties between Buenos Aires and Beijing but did not comment immediately on the confirmation that Mr. Nisman had considered seeking her arrest. She and the foreign minister have previously pointed to statements by Interpol’s former director that the Argentine government did not lobby it to lift the Iranian arrest warrants.

Viviana Fein, the prosecutor investigating Mr. Nisman’s death, confirmed on Tuesday morning that Mr. Nisman had prepared the draft of the warrant requesting the president’s arrest. Confusion about the document had emerged when Ms. Fein had initially denied its existence, after the newspaper Clarín published an article on Sunday about the draft.

Mrs. Kirchner’s cabinet chief, Jorge Capitanich, tore up the article before reporters on Monday. But then Ms. Fein corrected her earlier statement and confirmed the existence of the draft, which Clarín said was prepared in June 2014, more than six months before Mr. Nisman went public with his accusations against the president.  (READ MORE)