Charges against Argentina’s president are dismissed. Here’s why

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — An Argentine judge dismissed charges Thursday that President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner secretly tried to protect Iran from her country’s probe into a Jewish community center bombing.

The move has stalled a sensational scandal that’s been spinning out of control for weeks.

The saga reads like a crime novel. There’s alleged forced suicide, shadowy spymasters, suspected Iranian terrorists and, at the center of it all, a polarizing president who’s been up to her neck in accusations.

The drama peaked earlier this month, when a prosecutor formally accused Fernandez de Kirchner and other officials of conspiring to cover up Iran’s alleged involvement in the 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) — the country’s deadliest terrorist attack.

The prosecutor who first made the allegation was found shot dead in his apartment last month, provoking large protests in this South American capital city and stoking anger at the government.

More from GlobalPost: A who’s who in Argentina’s deadly whodunit

But let’s take a step back for a moment.

Criminal charges against a president make for awesome headlines. But there are several reasons why it’s not surprising Judge Daniel Rafecas dismissed them.

GlobalPost traveled to Buenos Aires to meet legal experts who helped decipher the accusations, Argentina’s legal system and the broader political machinations at play. Here’s what we learned.

1. First, understand the accusations and who Alberto Nisman is

President Fernandez de Kirchner and six other suspects, including Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, were accused of conspiring to protect a group of Iranians whom Argentine prosecutors suspect of orchestrating the 1994 bombing, which killed 85 people.

The case was built by Alberto Nisman, a prosecutor who investigated the attack for more than 10 years. In January, Nisman announced he had discovered evidence that Fernandez de Kirchner and other top officials had allegedly engaged in a cover-up. He outlined the accusations in a 289-page “denuncia” or complaint presented to a federal judge.

In a nutshell, Nisman alleged the government offered official impunity to the Iranians in exchange for Iran trading oil for Argentine grain. Argentina has been facing a severe energy crisis for more than a decade, and desperately needs cheap oil.

The Argentine president and officials deny the accusations, and Iran’s government has always refuted allegations the country had a role in the attack.

On Jan. 18, hours before he was due to testify on the case before Argentina’s congress, Nisman was found dead in his bathroom with a bullet in his head and a handgun near his body.

Buenos Aires police are currently investigating if Nisman committed suicide, or if he was murdered.

But the case didn’t end with Nisman’s death. On Feb. 13, a new prosecutor resurrected his investigation. More on that in a minute.

2. The accusations were not quite charges as such

This may sound like semantics, but it’s important.

Argentina and the United States have very different criminal justice systems. Argentina’s federal courts operate largely under the “inquisitorial” system, rather than the “adversarial” system used in the US.

What’s the difference? Mainly that Argentine prosecutors are required to do much less actual investigation and need to provide less evidence than their US counterparts before presenting a case to the court. And prosecutors in Argentina have far less freedom to investigate their suspects. For example, they only have very limited power to request wiretaps or subpoena witnesses.

“In the inquisitorial system, the discovery is done by the judge,” says Martin Bohmer, a New York University global law professor based in Buenos Aires. (“Discovery” is the process of gathering information for a lawsuit.) In Argentina, Bohmer says, “The prosecutor kind of suggests to the judge what to do.”

Consequently, a denuncia that an Argentine prosecutor files with a judge — like the one against Fernandez — is significantly different from US-style federal charges.

“It’s putting in motion the discovery that the judge is going to do, it’s not finding your stuff out and then putting everything on the judge’s table,” Bohmer says.

Judge Rafecas’ decision to “discontinue” the case therefore places the burden back onto the prosecutor, who can appeal the ruling.

But the prosecutor’s case has never looked very strong.

3. There’s no smoking gun (at least not yet)

The key evidence against Fernandez and the other suspects is a series of secretly recorded phone conversations between alleged clandestine negotiators working on behalf of the government.

Nisman placed great weight on this evidence. He appeared convinced that he had a foolproof case against the president.

But legal observers aren’t so sure.

Three Buenos Aires attorneys familiar with the case, including two lawyers who acknowledge they are not fans of the president, say the evidence so far made public against the defendants is weak.

German Gonzalez Campana, a Harvard-educated defense lawyer, called the case “incoherent.” He says the evidence cited is questionable both in substance and origin.

The recorded conversations were between minor players who weren’t themselves part of the government and had little power, according to Gonzalez. And the references to the alleged cover-up were vague.

“There’s no conversation between any first officials,” Gonzalez says. “It’s all second-hand and people who were not part of the government.”

Judge Rafecas apparently agrees.

"The evidence gathered far from meets the minimal standard," said a statement from the judiciary branch's CIJ information service.

“He said it’s very weak,” says Diego Fleitas, a Buenos Aires corporate lawyer and public policy expert, describing the judge’s opinion. “The evidence doesn’t incriminate the officials.”

There are also significant questions about where exactly this evidence comes from, with much speculation that Nisman was fed the recorded calls by Argentina’s former intelligence agency director Antonio Stiusso. The government had fired Stiusso in December.

He has since disappeared.

Shortly after Nisman’s death, Fernandez de Kirchner announced a bill to dissolve the spy agency. On Thursday, legislators approved it, replacing the agency with a body with greater federal government oversight.

4. The prosecutor who charged the president inherited a very hot potato

An obvious question arises: If the case is so weak, why did it even get in front of a judge?

The answer gets to the core of this whole scandal.

In early February, the Jewish center bombing case was taken over by prosecutor Gerardo Pollicita.

On Feb. 13, Pollicita announced he was officially acting on Nisman’s allegations and sent his denuncia to a federal judge — at first glance, a highly significant move. It looked like a wholehearted endorsement of Nisman’s investigation, a fellow prosecutor’s acknowledgment that Nisman was on to something.

But legal experts aren’t so sure.

Pollicita was presented with an impossible situation when he took on the case.

If he had refused to bring the widely publicized charges, he would have faced the wrath of the Argentine public, who would have suspected he too was involved in a government conspiracy, the attorneys say.

And they offer startling theories of what could ensue.

“The Pollicita decision was a spectacle,” Fleitas says. “For a prosecutor in that situation, he had to move forward. If he doesn’t, people will murder him. He’s dead.”

Gonzalez offers an eerily similar assessment.

“He couldn’t do that,” Gonzalez says. “I mean, he has the legal power to do that, but that would be crazy. He would get killed on the streets.”

Pollicita, therefore, inherited a legal hot potato. And it looks like the judge has chosen to quickly let go of it.

We’ll see what happens next.