The stage was set for Alberto Nisman, a high level prosecutor in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to testify in court that President Cristina Fernandez and other top Argentinian officials illegally covered up an Iranian connection in the 1994 bombing of the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. The JCC bombing is considered Argentina’s worst terrorist attack to date.

However, hours before he was supposed to testify in court, Nisman, very suspiciously, ended up dead. He was found in the bathroom of his locked apartment with a bullet wound in the right side of his head. Moreover, according to initial investigators, a .22 caliber handgun and a casing for the bullet that killed him lay next to his lifeless body.

The timing of his death is what casts a shadow on what would otherwise be considered an open and shut suicide. Prosecutor Viviana Fein, who is in charge of the investigation looking into Nisman’s death, said that no gunpowder residue was found on Nisman’s hands.

In an interview with Radio Mitre, Fein also mentioned that this wassn’t completely unexpected as the caliber of the weapon is quite small.

Another suspicious point of note is that no suicide note was found, and neither friends nor colleagues of Nisman’s had seen any sign that Nisman planned to kill himself. There were no signs of forced entry or robbery in the apartment.

According to a statement from the Argentine Ministry of Security, Nisman had reported receiving death threats and 10 federal police officers had been assigned to protect him. Officers, however, were not posted inside the apartment building, but at its entrance and in a vehicle nearby.

The terror attack in 1994 saw the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association building bombed. 85 people were killed in the attack, which remains an unsolved case to this day. Nisman was among the many that pointed the blame at Iranian officials and accused them of masterminding the car-bomb attack as part of a worldwide campaign against Israel.

Nisman had even gone so far as to ask a federal judge last week to call in Fernandez as well as other high ranking officials, including Foreign Minister Hector Timerman, for questioning. Nisman accused them of a criminal act in deciding to fabricate Iran’s innocence. The motive, Nisman suggested, was to save Argentina’s commercial and political interests. The judge was still considering Nisman’s request.

In response to Nisman’s death, thousands of Argentines gathered in Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires and demonstrated. Protests were held in other cities across Argentina and the message was clear: the demand for the authorities to reveal the truth of Nisman’s death.

In a twist of the popular slogan emanating from France following the attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine, many of the protesters gathered under the slogan “I Am Nisman” and chanted “Justice! Justice!”

Argentine congresswoman Cornelia Schmidt-Liermann was set to pick up Nisman on Monday and accompany him for his testimony. She told the Associated Press that “there is no indication, under any circumstances, that he killed himself.” The autopsy report has proven “inconclusive.”

Israel’s Foreign Ministry expressed “deep sorrow” over Nisman’s death, stating: “Nisman, a courageous, venerable jurist who fought intrepidly for justice, acted with determination to expose the identities of the terrorists and their dispatchers.”