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Data Was Allegedly Deleted from Dead Argentine Prosecutor's Phone

The plot thickens.
Protest demanding justice for Alberto Nisman (Image: Jaluj/Wikimedia Commons)

Lawyers representing Argentine prosecutor Alberto Nisman are alleging information was deleted from his phone around the time of his death, adding more fuel to the theory he was murdered and did not commit suicide as was initially suggested.

Motherboard had previously reported that Nisman had spyware on his phone for weeks before his death, according to a report by security researcher Morgan Marquis-Boire.

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Nisman was found dead from a gunshot wound to the head on January the 19th, the day he planned to testify against the government. Nisman had promised he was going to prove the government covered up Iran's role in a 1994 terrorist attack in Argentina.

Calls and texts others claim they received from the prosecutor in the days leading up to his death do not appear on the phone, lawyers said, and the fact that they could not be retrieved implies they were removed using a "secure deletion" tool that left no trace.

Martín Romero Victorica, who is representing members of Nisman's family, said someone must have physically entered the prosecutor's apartment and deleted the data from Nisman's phone the night of January 18.

"In order for the calls and messages that have disappeared to be deleted, we are convinced that someone installed some form of hardware in the phone to extract the archives, or downloaded an application that would permit the secure erasure of these messages and later deleted this application," Romero Victorica said, according to statement published in Clarín and translated by Motherboard.

"These methods could not be carried out by the average person, they were done by someone with expertise in computers."

Marquis-Boire told Motherboard traces of the call logs could have theoretically been removed with secure deletion tools.

"If you said it was plausible you wouldn't be wrong––it depends on how it was deleted," he said. "Digital forensics can be used to recover deleted data from mobile devices, but if you deleted the data in a secure manner, then that would make recovery quite difficult."

The prosecutor's death is under ongoing investigation by multiple agencies, but his family members and supporters have complained the case has been bungled by officials, causing continued anti-government protests in Argentina.

Correction: The original headline of this article suggested that Nisman was murdered. We have changed this to reflect that this is disputed.