Argentina: Spy Agency to be Dissolved Amid Agents' Suspected Involvement in Prosecutor's Death

Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez plans to dissolve the country's intelligence agency and replace it with a more transparent body amid suspicion that some agents were involved in the mysterious death of a prosecutor who was probing a 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre that left 85 people dead.

Fernandez, who has expressed her disappointment over covert operations of the agency Intelligence Secretariat (SI), gave her televised address on Monday, her first since prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found dead on 18 January, hours before he was about to testify against senior government officials. 

A week before his death, he had accused President Fernandez and Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, among others, of being involved in a plot to cover up Iran's alleged role in the bombing. 

Nisman had alleged that Fernandez opened clandestine back channel talks with Tehran to cover up Iran's alleged involvement in the bombing in order to access Iranian oil.

Fernandez had dismissed Nisman's allegation as "absurd." 

Nisman's death, just before he was set to claim that Fernandez conspired to derail his investigation, triggered a spate of conspiracy theories one of which pointed fingers directly at the president herself.

However, Fernandez alleged that Nisman was fooled into making allegations and was subsequently killed when he was no longer of any use to those behind the conspiracy, Reuters notes.

She said she would send Congress a bill proposing the creation of a new intelligence agency.

Alleging that intelligence services have changed little since the country's transition to democracy after the end of the military government in 1983, she said, "We need to make the intelligence services more transparent because they have not served the interests of the country."

Thousands of angry civilians took to street last week protesting against the way the president has handled the scandal.