Argentine justice reopens the process for the attempted murder of Cristina Fernández

Stella Calloni

Correspondent

The newspaper La Jornada
Saturday, August 3, 2024, p. twenty

Buenos Aires, Former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner will testify on the 14th of this month in the trial investigating the assassination attempt she suffered on September 1, 2022, when she was vice president.

The process has taken so long, without explanation, with those responsible for the event that shocked the world being accused: a man infiltrated a massive support demonstration outside her house tried to shoot the vice president – ​​a few centimetres from her head – and although he pulled the trigger twice the gun jammed, which was recorded by a cameraman covering the event, allowing the attacker to be immediately arrested.

However, the judge in charge, María Eugencia Capuchetti, halted the proceedings despite being presented with evidence pointing to the masterminds behind the incident, linked to the right-wing government of Mauricio Macri (2015-2019), which brought the process to a standstill.

It was not until June 26 that oral trial was held in federal courts, with Fernando Sabag Montiel – the one who fired and whose gun jammed – as defendants, Brenda Uliarte and Nicolás Carrizo, members of the so-called band of the snowflakes (corn), since they appeared as sellers, when in reality they were gathering data on the movements of the former president. The accusation is for attempted double-qualified homicide, with treachery, planned between two or more people and aggravated by the use of a firearmThe gun fell from Montiel’s hands and the young men surrounding Fernández immediately arrested him.

There were raids and cell phones confiscated from those involved; their messages led to the pro-Nazi movement Revolución Federal, responsible for violent demonstrations and criminal threats against the former president and human rights activists.

Errors in the investigation

But the cell phone seized from Montiel was emptied, supposedly due to a bad maneuver by a police officer in the Capucheti court. Thanks to the others, part of the plan to kill Fernández was reconstructed, who still questions the fact that the justice system decided not to investigate the financiers of the copitos and Revolución Federal, despite the evidence in this regard. Now 277 witnesses will parade in the trial, which will also have a supplementary instructionwith measures that have not been taken until now or that were deficient. Among them, the examination of the main accused’s cell phone again.

Capuchetti, whose links with supporters of former President Macri came to light, did not want to include in the trial the masterminds behind the assassination attempt, or other clues. Fernández de Kirchner is the most important Argentine political leader and the most persecuted by the media, which is part of the lawfare –the media and judicial war– that began when she was a brilliant senator, in the 1990s. This worsened when she was elected president in 2007, succeeding her husband Néstor Kirchner –now deceased– and it skyrocketed even more in 2011, during her second term.

It is enough to remember the covers of some magazines, the fake news and the opening of dozens of cases – without evidence – under the Macri government, in which the managers of vulture fundslike Singer who created a task force to destabilize his government, with the participation of the current Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, and especially the Cadal Foundation, supported and financed by the Cuban-American lobby in Miami.

There is no leader in Argentine history who has been so persecuted, after former president Juan Domingo Perón and his wife, Eva. But in the case of Fernández de Kirchner, the persecution and fake news continue to this day, when she remains the most important political leader in this country – the details of which could fit into a book – and she faces it with admirable fortitude.