MEXICO CITY, DEC. 2 -- Israeli officials today prepared to repatriate the body of Amiram
Nir Nisker, an Israeli middleman in the Iran-contra scandal, as a
mystery surrounding his presence in Mexico deepened.
Nir, 37, was killed Wednesday afternoon when a small plane that he
had apparently chartered under an assumed name crash-landed on a ranch
in the state of Michoacan, about 110 miles west of Mexico City.
Also killed in the crash was a Mexican man, Pedro Espinoza Hurtado,
Mexican authorities said. They said two other persons aboard the Cessna
light plane survived: a Canadian woman, Adriana Stanton, 25, who was
apparently accompanying Nir, and the pilot, Guillermo Cuahonte, 28.
The plane was flying from the town of Uruapan in Michoacan state to
Mexico City when it crashed about half an hour after takeoff in fair
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weather near Agostitlan, a village south of the town of Ciudad Hidalgo,
Mexican authorities said.
Both Israeli and Mexican sources, including the brother of the
injured pilot, said there was no evidence of sabotage in the crash,
which they attributed to engine failure.
Nir, a former journalist in Israel, had served as an "adviser on
terrorism" to two Israeli prime ministers and was a key liaison in the
Iran-contra affair. His name surfaced in congressional testimony on the
affair as an associate of former White House official Oliver North in
complex dealings in 1985 and 1986 to sell U.S. weapons to Iran in
exchange for the release of American hostages in Lebanon.
In July 1986, Nir briefed Vice President Bush in Jerusalem on the
sales, but he refused to testify before Congress about the affair. He
resigned his Israeli government post earlier this year and has since
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been engaged in unspecific business dealings.
After Nir left the prime minister's office, friends in Israel say, he
set up an office in London as the representative of an Israeli security
manufacturing company. One friend who saw Nir regularly said the former
counterterrorism adviser told him, "I want to make a lot of money, and I
don't really care how." The friend said Nir told him he was involved as
a middleman in various sales and hinted that he was dealing in both arms
and oil contracts in Mexico.
Other knowledgeable Israelis said they doubted that Nir was working
for either Israeli or American intelligence. They noted that Nir had
alienated officials of both Israeli's Mossad intelligence agency and the
CIA when he played a dominant role in the Iran-contra affair.
The Israeli newspaper Hadashot reported today that Nir had told other
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friends that he wanted to build a career as an international
entrepreneur. "No, not arms dealings, anything but that," the friends
quoted Nir as saying. "I have had enough of missiles. There are a few
very exciting projects around the world that are waiting, and I am going
to do them."
The Israeli ambassador to Mexico, Dov Schmorak, said Nir had not
contacted the embassy after his arrival in Mexico last Sunday and that
his reasons for flying to Uruapan the following day were a mystery.
"We didn't know about his existence here until we got the sad news
that he was dead," Schmorak said in a telephone interview. Asked what
Nir was doing in Mexico, he said, "I have not the slightest idea." The
ambassador also said he did not know why Nir gave his name as "Pat
Weber" when he chartered the single-engine plane, identified as a Cessna
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A statement issued yesterday by the state attorney general's office
in Morelia, the capital of Michoacan, said an Israeli passport in Nir's
name had been found on the body of the man who traveled under the name
of Weber, and that an investigation into the case was continuing.
An Israeli Embassy official was said to have positively identified
the dead man yesterday as Nir, in part from a glass eye that he has worn
since an auto accident in his youth. The body was then brought to Mexico
City on a private plane and reportedly will be repatriated to Israel via
Schmorak said he was puzzled as to the reason for Nir's visit to
Michoacan, a place that he noted was not particularly well known for
either tourism or industry.
In fact, Michoacan is a leading source for Mexican marijuana and
heroin that is smuggled into the United States, but there was no
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immediate evidence of any connection between this fact and Nir's visit
to the state.
Neither of the crash's survivors shed any light on Nir's presence in
Mexico. But the reported account of Stanton conflicted with statements
by Mexican officials.
According to Juan Manuel Ortega, an inspector at the Uruapan airport
who was contacted by telephone, Stanton was serving as Nir's "secretary"
while accompanying him on his travels in Mexico.
Another official, Isauro Gutierrez Fernandez, a spokesman for the
Michoacan state attorney general's office, was quoted by The Associated
Press as saying Stanton, a resident of Uruapan, was serving as Nir's
"guide." Gutierrez said Nir arrived Monday in Uruapan, "where he stayed
with friends," the AP reported.
"It appears he had some possible business involving shipments of
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products from Latin America to Europe," Gutierrez told the AP without
elaborating.
The news agency quoted Stanton as saying from her hospital bed that
she did not know Nir well and could shed no light on his activities in
Mexico. "It was a coincidence," she was quoted as saying. "We shared the
plane." Officials at the hospital in Mexico City would not allow Stanton
to be interviewed.
Washington Post correspondent Glenn Frankel in Jerusalem and special
correspondent Andrea Dabrowsky in Mexico City contributed to this
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