BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — An employee in the Buenos Aires prosecutor’s office who has been charged for lending a pistol to Alberto Nisman said the slain prosecutor asked him for a gun.
Diego Lagomarsino, 35, an information technician, at a news conference Wednesday recalled his meeting with Nisman, the prosecutor investigating the deadly 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing, at Nisman’s Buenos Aires apartment a day before he was found dead there of a gunshot wound to his head.
Lagomarsino, who acknowledged that he lent a “very old” .22 caliber pistol to Nisman, is the only one who has been charged in the case. Investigators say a .22 caliber pistol fired the bullet that struck Nisman from point-blank range above the right ear.
According to Lagomarsino, who was speaking publicly for the first time since being charged, Nisman told him on Jan. 17 at the apartment, “I am more afraid of being right than being wrong,” referring to charges in a complaint he filed shortly before his death charging that Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was involved in a cover-up of Iran’s participation in the AMIA bombing, which killed 85.
“Then he asks me, ‘Do you have a gun?'” Lagomarsino recalled in the news conference held at the Buenos Aires office of his lawyer, Maximiliano Rusconi. “That caught me off guard.”
Lagomarsino went on to say that “it is not every day that your boss asks you for a gun. I freeze and then unfortunately I said yes. I told him, ‘you don’t need a gun, do you have security?’ ”
Nisman replied, according to Lagomarsino, “I cannot even trust in my own security guard. Do not worry, I will not use it.”
Lagomarsino, who works on issues of information security, recalled that Nisman “explained me that he does want to use the gun, he was going to keep the gun stored in the glove box of his car.”
Nisman said, according to Lagomarsino, “I just need it for my glove compartment in case some nut job calls me a traitor.
“I cannot even trust in my own security detail. It is very sad that your daughters are afraid to be with you because they have fears,” he told the employee.
Lagomarsino said that Nisman told him, “after a couple of weeks, I will return the gun to you.”
Following the request, Lagomarsino said he went home and returned to Nisman’s apartment with the gun.
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