Reuters/Buenos Aires

Forensic experts have found DNA evidence of a second person in the apartment where an Argentine prosecutor was found dead last month after he accused the president of whitewashing a deadly 1994 bombing.
Investigators hope the new DNA sample will shed light on a case that has spawned conspiracy theories involving president Cristina Fernandez, rogue intelligence agents and a group of Iranians accused by the Argentine courts of bombing the AMIA Jewish community center 21 years ago.
The body of prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found in his bathroom on January 18, a bullet in his head and a pistol by his side. He had been scheduled to bring a case to Congress the next day accusing Fernandez of trying to derail the criminal investigation into the bombing that killed 85 people.
Until Tuesday there had been no evidence of anyone else in Nisman’s Buenos Aires apartment. The judge in the case filed court papers saying a sample “corresponding to a genetic profile different from Nisman’s” had been found.
People who visited Nisman in the days before his death will be called to give DNA samples, said judge Fabiana Palmaghini.
The president’s chief of staff, Anibal Fernandez, who is not related to the two-term head of state, told reporters yesterday that everything pointed to Nisman having taken his own life. But messages from the government have been contradictory, leaving Argentines scratching their heads over the prosecutor’s death.
Gustavo Lopez, an undersecretary in the presidency, said on Monday the mysterious death was part of “an attempted coup d’etat, that aims to get rid of the president”.
Nisman showed no signs of being suicidal, friends said. To the contrary, they said he was ready to go to Congress on January 19 to present his case that Fernandez conspired to clear the suspects in the bombing as a way of getting access to Iranian oil needed to help close Argentina’s $7bn per year energy deficit.
The government dismissed the accusation as ridiculous. Fernandez will leave office at the end of the year, barred by law from seeking a third consecutive term.
The next big step in the investigation is expected to be testimony by former Argentine master spy Antonio Stiusso, who was fired by the president in December. Chief of staff Fernandez says Stiusso manipulated Nisman into leveling the conspiracy accusation against the president in reprisal for his firing.   
The assistant who supplied late Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman with the gun used in his mysterious death has been sacked, officials said Monday.
The justice ministry announced the dismissal of Diego Lagomarsino, a computer expert at the Argentine public prosecutor’s office and the last person known to have seen Nisman alive.
Lagomarsino was fired because Nisman’s interim replacement “reported that he did no work”, Luis Villanueva, a spokesman for the public prosecutor’s office, told radio station Nacional Rock.
Lagomarsino has admitted to lending Nisman the .22-calibre revolver that killed him, though it remains a mystery who pulled the trigger.
Since the death, initially labeled a suicide, suspicion has fallen on Kirchner’s government of orchestrating Nisman’s murder.
Lagomarsino, who has been charged with giving a firearm to someone other than its registered owner, says he brought Nisman the gun because the late prosecutor told him he feared for his life.
The government has said Lagomarsino is an agent of Antonio Jaime Stiuso, a powerful ex-spy who Kirchner says was feeding information to Nisman.
The prosecutor investigating Nisman’s death, Viviana Fein, said Stiuso will give a deposition this week after failing to respond to a summons last week.
“I need to see what relationship he had with Mr Nisman,” Fein said.
She said Stiuso had received “repeated” phone calls from Nisman the night he died.
Fein also said a second test for gunpowder residue had been ordered after initial forensic testing found no trace of gunpowder on Nisman’s hands.
“My greatest wish is to discover the truth. Not just for me but for all Argentine citizens, so we know what was behind this, if there was a motive, if it was induced, if it was (Nisman’s) own decision or if there was a third person who fired the shot,” she told Radio La Red.
The bombing at the Argentine Jewish Mutual Association killed 85 people and wounded 300.
Nisman had accused Iran of ordering the attack via Lebanon-backed militant group Hezbollah, and alleged that Kirchner and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman were trying to shield Iranian officials from prosecution in exchange for oil.