Artigo saiu no jornal israelense The Haaretz.
Why I fled Argentina
after breaking the story of Alberto Nisman’s death
In an exclusive column, Jewish journalist Damian
Pachter – who first reported on the death of the special prosecutor – recounts
the intimidation, the sleepless nights, the agent who stalked him and his
ultimate decision to head for Israel.
So here they
are, the craziest 48 hours of my life.
When my source
gave me the scoop on Alberto Nisman’s death, I was writing a piece on
the special prosecutor’s accusations against President Cristina
Fernández de Kirchner, her (Jewish) Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman, two pro-Iran
“social activists” and parliamentarian Andrés Larroque. I learned that Nisman
had been shot dead in his home.
The vetting
process wasn’t too tough because of my source’s incredible attention to detail.
His name will never be revealed.
Two things stood
in my mind: my source’s safety and people’s right to know what happened that
day, though not necessarily in that order.
Of course, for
both speed and the contagion effect, Twitter was the way to go. The information
was so solid I never doubted my source, despite my one or two colleagues who
doubted me because I only had 420 Twitter followers — a number now eclipsing
10,000.
As the night
went on, journalists contacted me in order to get the news from me even more
directly. The first to do so was Gabriel Bracesco.
Once I tweeted
that Nisman had died, hundreds of people quickly retweeted the news and started
following me. That was my first of many sleepless days.
“You just broke
the best story in decades,” lots of people said. “You’re crazy,” was another take.
Either way, nobody questioned that the situation was very grave.
The following
days were marked by a government trying to create an official story. First, the
head of state suggested a “suicide hypothesis,” then a mysterious murder. They
of course were not to blame. In anything.
That week I
received several messages from one of my oldest and best sources. He urged me
to visit him, but in those crazy days I underestimated his proposal.
On Friday I was
working at the Buenos Aires Herald.com newsroom when a colleague from the BBC
urged me to look at the state news agency’s story on Nisman’s death. The piece
had some serious typos but the message was even stranger: The agency quoted a
supposed tweet of mine that I never wrote.
Bus to nowhere
I cursed in anger,
adding amid the profanity: “I’ll tweet this and then they’ll see.” But I waited
a few minutes to cool down and realized that this tweet was a kind of coded
message.
So I bounced it
off my friend, who said: “Get out now and go to Retiro,” Buenos Aires’ central
bus station. “And come visit me. You have to leave the city.” It was around
8:30 P.M.
I was very
lucky: When I arrived a bus would be leaving in two minutes. Where that bus was
going I’ll never reveal either.
After several
hours on the road, I arrived at the bus station, where I remained for a couple
of hours. It turns out this was a big mistake: I think that was the place
someone started watching me. But I didn’t realize it back then.
I didn’t want
to stay too long in any one place, so I walked over to a gas-station joint
nearby. My friend contacted me
and said: “I’ll be there in 20 minutes.”
I was sitting
around there for two hours or so when a very strange person came in. He wore
jeans, a jeans jacket and Ray-Ban sunglasses. I noticed him immediately but
stayed where I was. He was sitting two tables from me.
Suddenly I felt
a finger on my neck and jumped like I never did my whole life.
“You’re a bit
jumpy son” — it was my friend making one of his jokes. “You’re under
surveillance; haven’t you noticed the intelligence guy behind you?”
“The one with
the jeans and Ray-Bans?”
“Yeah.”
“What does he
want?”
“Stay calm and
look into my camera,” my guy said as he took my picture. Well, actually he took
a picture of the intelligence officer, who left five minutes later. I have that
picture here with me.
I then had to
consider the best thing to do, because when an Argentine intelligence agent is
on your tail, it’s never good news. He didn’t just want to have a coffee with me,
that’s for sure.
Montevideo and Madrid
In any case,
the decision came quick: I
had to leave the country immediately. So I contacted one of my best
friends, who got scared but understood the situation. We had to do it quickly,
and I’m sure his efficiency saved my life. I will forever be grateful to him.
So I did it: I
bought a ticket from Buenos Aires, to Montevideo, Uruguay, to Madrid to Tel
Aviv.
I had to keep a
low profile in order to get by the security forces. So I went back to the
Retiro bus station — the scariest part of that long day. I was sure that if
something happened, it would happen at the train station, a very dangerous
place at night.
I had the
feeling someone was after me and I’d get shot from some strange angle. But then
I suspected my taxi driver even more. I figured he’d stray and take me off
somewhere.
Meanwhile, text
messages were sent to my two best colleagues, a friend and my mom. They were
told where we would meet: Buenos Aires Airport. I couldn’t spend any time on
the phone because I was being surveilled.
When my mother
arrived she of course cried but remained calm. We discussed a few things and I
told her to leave. Then my journalist friends came and we did an interview that
has already hit Argentina’s top newspapers. I was flying back home, to Tel
Aviv, as I always wanted to.
I have no idea
when I’ll be back in Argentina; I don’t even know if I want to. What I do know
is that the country where I was born is not the happy place my Jewish
grandparents used to tell me stories about.
After I left
Argentina I found out that the government was still publishing wrong
information about me on social media. The Twitter feed of Casa Rosada, the
Argentine presidential palace, posted the details of the airline ticket I had
bought, and claimed that I intended to return to Argentina by February 2 — in
other words, I hadn’t really fled the country. In fact, my return date is in
December.
A tweet from the Presidential Palace showing Pachter's
flight itinerary.
Argentina has
become a dark place led by a corrupt political system. I still haven’t figured
out everything that has happened to me over the past 48 hours. I never imagined
my return to Israel would be like this.
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Bom, acho que o réporter fez um ótimo resumo no último parágrafo: Argentina se tornou um país pária.
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Bom, acho que o réporter fez um ótimo resumo no último parágrafo: Argentina se tornou um país pária.
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