Reporter insists Argentine gov’t pursued him

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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (JTA) — Damian Pachter, the Argentine-Israeli journalist who was the first to report the death of prosecutor Alberto Nisman, said he feels safe now that he has arrived in Israel.

Pachter, a writer for the Buenos Aires Herald, said he felt “pursued by the Argentine government” and that his life was in danger in Argentina, he told Argentine journalist Adrian Bono in an interview from Tel Aviv via Skype.
Pachter, who has dual Argentine-Israeli citizenship, left Argentina on Jan. 24 following what he said were threats to his safety after breaking the story.

He criticized Argentina’s Telam news agency and the Twitter account of the president’s office for publishing information about his plane tickets and wrongly claiming he planned to return to Argentina on Feb. 2. Pachter made similar comments in a column he published Jan. 25 in Haaretz titled “Why I fled Argentina after breaking the story of Alberto Nisman’s death.”

In the Haaretz piece, Pachter said, “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.  Argentina has become a dark place led by a corrupt political system,” he added.