The former operations chief of Argentina’s spy agency failed to show up for a court hearing on Thursday amid reports that he has fled the country because he fears for his life.
Antonio Stiuso was one of the most powerful men in the country until late last year, but his fortunes have changed dramatically as a result of a falling out with the president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, and his involvement with prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who died in mysterious circumstances in January.
He was called to testify this week about allegations that he and Nisman held up an investigation into the country’s deadliest terrorist attack: the 1994 bombing of the Amia Jewish community centre. He is also accused of tax evasion and running a contraband operation.
But his lawyer said he would not attend because he had left the country to escape threats against his life and attempts to sully his reputation.
“We believe [Stiuso] will continue to be a government target,” Santiago Blanco Bermúdez told the Associated Press without specifying the nature of the threats or his client’s location. He said his client denied all the charges against him.
The government said Stiuso was treating the Argentinian courts as a joke and warned that judicial authorities could order his arrest overseas if he did not return to Argentina to testify.
“Stiuso is a former intelligence agent with 42 years of service and there are things he will have to explain,” said the cabinet chief, Aníbal Fernández.
“If he continues to refuse to appear, it will be the judicial branch itself that will ask him to appear, and if he doesn’t, additional measures will have to be taken that might include an international arrest warrant.”
Stiuso, a former operations chief of the intelligence secretariat, ran a vast wire-tapping network that he built up under Férnandez and her predecessor and husband, Néstor Kirchner. Among his responsibilities was support for Nisman’s investigation into alleged Iranian involvement in the 1994 bombing of the Amia centre.
But he and the prosecutor became disillusioned with Férnandez when she signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran in 2013, that set up a joint truth commission to investigate the blast, undermining their own investigation.
Férnandez shook up the intelligence secretariat in December after it failed to alert her that Nisman was preparing to accuse the president of conspiring with Iran to cover up the bombing. Stiuso was sacked in December.
The prosecutor was found dead with a bullet in his brain on 18 January, the day before he was due to present his case to Congress. Investigators have yet to determine whether it was suicide or murder, but Férnandez has publicly blamed rogue agents from the spy agency, which she has vowed to replace.
Stiuso’s exact whereabouts remain unknown. At the time of Nisman’s death he was in Miami, according to a former head of the SIDE intelligence agency, Miguel Ángel Toma, who worked with Stiuso during 2002-03.
He is known to have made two phone calls to Nisman’s former wife, Sandra Arroyo Salgado, on 27 January to express his condolences. Stiuso was reportedly close to both Nisman and his ex-wife.
Other reports said Stiuso had spent the southern summer holidays in January and February in neighbouring Uruguay, but he returned to Buenos Aires to testify on 17 February at the court investigation into Nisman’s death.
This month, however, he failed to show for two summons. Stiuso had been scheduled to appear before the federal intelligence agency on 6 April to answer questions in an internal inquiry into “dilatory and irregular” conduct.
The new agency chief, Oscar Parrilli, said Stiuso had failed to conduct sufficient inquiries into international calls in and out of Argentina between 1991 and 1996 in connection with the 1994 Amia blast.
After Stiuso failed to appear for that appointment, he was called to appear before the team of three new prosecutors appointed by Fernández to replace Nisman as investigator into the 1994 blast. He was again absent.
