Argentine justice rules out a political motive behind the assassination attempt of Cristina Kirchner

Cristina Kirchner speaks at the Plaza de Mayo during the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the coming to power of her husband, Nestor Kirchner, in Buenos Aires on May 25, 2023.Mario De Fina (AP)

"They want me imprisoned or dead," Cristina Kirchner wrote in a long letter published Monday on her social networks. The former president of Argentina thus criticized the decision of the prosecutor's office to close the investigation into the assassination attempt against her without going beyond the three material authors. The Public Ministry considered that there are no elements to attribute to an opposition political space the financing and organization of the attack, as Kirchner maintains, and sent the detainees to oral trial. "It is an act of consecration of impunity," complained the vice president.

On September 1, 2022, Cristina Kirchner was arriving at her apartment in Buenos Aires when a 35-year-old man named Fernando Sabag Montiel mixed in with people and shot her twice in the head. The gun jammed and Sabag Montiel was arrested by the demonstrators who were accompanying the vice president that afternoon. Police later arrested his girlfriend, Brenda Uliarte, 23, and weeks later Nicolas Carrizo, a friend of the couple accused of being a necessary participant in the failed attack. Judge Maria Eugenia Capuchetti prosecuted them for attempted murder. "I threw the latch back, and when I pulled the trigger the shot didn't come out. In the midst of so much tumult and so many people I was nervous," Sabag Montiel said months later, from prison. Kirchner never accepted that this trio of marginals, who survived by selling sugar flakes on the street, were capable of planning an assassination without support.

40 years of Democracy. The Judicial Party and the consecration of impunity.https://t.co/HDXPdeW3z2

— Cristina Kirchner (@CFKArgentina) May 29, 2023

During the investigation, the vice president's lawyers asked for an investigation into whether they had received external funding. They pointed directly at an opposition deputy, Gerardo Milman, who was accused by a witness of being aware of the attack before it was committed. Milman is linked to presidential candidate Patricia Bullrich, Minister of Security during the Government of Mauricio Macri. The lawsuit also called for progress on a far-right organization called the Federal Revolution, popular for throwing torches against the Casa Rosada and marching against Kirchner with a representation of his head decapitated by a guillotine.

Prosecutor Carlos Rívolo, in charge of the investigation, said that the three detainees "did not receive during the two years prior to the attack any sum of money that would make it presume that they had been financed to carry out an act like the one investigated here." The evidence gathered, he added, "prevents considering that there has been an organization of any kind, political party or partisan, person or group of people who have, in any way, financed, planned, covered up or contributed in any way with the accused" to attempt against Kirchner.

Photograph found on Sabag Montiel's cell phone in which he poses with the weapon used in the attack against Cristina Kirchner. FF.

The conclusions did not go down well with the vice president. "I said it a thousand times: neither Capuchetti nor Rívolo wanted to investigate the assassination attempt and now they intend to close the investigation with a speed that they never demonstrated in any case," Kirchner wrote. "The whole investigation was characterized by avoiding knowing the truth. It is plagued by witnesses who erased their phones, evidence that it was destroyed without investigating its causes and motivations, and an obvious and desperate attempt to avoid finding the possible involvement of third parties, financiers and instigators. As I said, for CFK there is and will not be justice, neither as accused nor as victim."

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