BUENOS AIRES — Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor whose mysterious death has gripped Argentina, had drafted a request for the arrest of President Cristina Fernandez, 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 Tuesday.
The 26-page document, which was found in the garbage at Nisman’s apartment, also sought the arrest of Héctor Timerman, Argentina’s foreign minister.
Both Fernandez and Timerman have repeatedly denied 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 Nisman had drafted documents seeking the arrest of the president and the foreign minister illustrates the heightened tensions between the prosecutor and the government before he was found dead 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 Fernandez.
“It would have provoked a crisis without precedents in Argentina,” Sergio Berensztein, a political analyst, said about the effect of the arrest requests if they had been issued.
He noted 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,” Berensztein said.
Fernandez, 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 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.
“It is totally baseless, the accusation of Mr. Nisman,” Timerman said in an interview here before the reports emerged that the prosecutor had considered seeking his arrest and that of Fernandez. “Why didn’t he call Interpol to see if it was true? He didn’t.”
The draft of the arrest requests was not included in the 289-page criminal complaint against Fernandez, the foreign minister and prominent supporters of the president that Nisman filed before his death. Nisman accused them of derailing his decadelong investigation into the 1994 bombing of the Argentina Israelite Mutual Association, which left 85 people dead.
In his criminal complaint, Nisman accused Fernandez and a group of her supporters of covering up a secret outreach effort to the Iranians, describing it as an attempt to derail his investigation, and he asked for their assets to be frozen.
Two judges have refused to take the case put forward by Nisman, raising the possibility that his criminal complaint could languish in Argentina’s legal system if another judge is not found to continue it.
A federal chamber is expected to decide who should take the case.