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Argentine journalist who revealed prosecutor's death flees to Israel

The Argentine journalist who first broke the story of the suspicious death of the prosecutor investigating a 1994 bombing in Buenos Aires has arrived in Israel, after fleeing his country because of fears for his safety.

Damian Pachter, a journalist for the English-language Buenos Aires Herald, arrived in Tel Aviv shortly after 6pm on Sunday on a flight from Madrid.

"I left because the Argentine government pursued me because of my news reports regarding the prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who died in an unresolved way last week," Mr Pachter told journalists waiting at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion airport. "I was the first to report on that and now I am suffering the consequences."

Mr Nisman was found dead from a gunshot wound a week ago, hours before he was due to present his case before Argentine lawmakers on the bombing of a Buenos Aires Jewish community centre that killed 85 people and injured hundreds of others.

The prosecutor's case implicated Argentine president Cristina Fernandez and members of her government in a deal to exempt high-ranking Iranian officials implicated in the attack, in return to swap grain for Iranian oil. Mr Nisman's death shocked Argentines and has precipitated one of the worst political crises in the country's history.

Mr Pachter was the first journalist to break the story of Mr Nisman's death when he tweeted that there had been an "incident" at his flat. Argentine officials initially said the death was a suicide, but have since retreated from this claim.

"They used security forces to chase me," Mr Pachter said after landing in Tel Aviv. "I had to move as fast as I could to get into a plane and just leave the country right away."

Mr Pachter holds Israeli citizenship and said he had come to Israel "because I lived the most important years of my life here and this is the place where I feel safe". He did not say how long he planned to stay.

The bombing at the AMIA community centre and an explosion at the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992 that killed 29 people remain unsolved more than two decades later. They were the worst terrorist attacks in Argentina's history.

When asked whether he thought the bombing cases would ever be resolved, Mr Pacther said: "No, because there are political interests in the middle and they just want to cover it up."

He said he planned to brief the media at a press conference on Monday.

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