Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has asked to serve her six-year prison sentence for corruption under house arrest, her lawyer said Wednesday, a day after the Supreme Court upheld her conviction and ban on holding public office.
The ex-president’s legal team, denouncing “political persecution” against the Partido Justicialista chair, also announced it had raised her case with the International Criminal Court (ICC) as supporters expressed outrage on the streets.
Argentina’s top court upheld a sentence of six years in prison and lifetime disqualification from holding public office for Fernández de Kirchner on Tuesday. The decision confirms her conviction for fraudulent administration in the awarding of public works contracts in Santa Cruz Province, in the country’s south.
The Supreme Court gave her five working days to present herself before the federal tribunal.
Given her age – 72 – Fernández de Kirchner has the right to request that she serve her sentence at her home in the Constitución neighbourhood of Buenos Aires.
"We are requesting the house arrest granted to people over 70," her lawyer Carlos Beraldi told reporters.
“We’re not asking for privileges, just for her to be treated the same as anyone else in the same legal situation,” he added.
Another of her lawyers, Gregorio Dalbón, travelled to the Dutch city of The Hague to file a complaint at the International Criminal Court.
He claimed the former president is a victim of a campaign of “political persecution,” given her position as the leading opposition figure to President Javier Milei’s government.
Writing on X, Dalbón said Fernández de Kirchner was the victim of "lawfare," slamming a “tainted process” with one goal: "to disqualify the woman who has won most often at the polls since the return to democracy" in 1983.
He said he would also appeal the verdict to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
Beraldi expressed concern for the former president’s safety, recalling the 2022 assassination attempt she survived and complaining that the “masterminds” of it “have not yet been identified.”
On Tuesday, Fernández de Kirchner herself branded the three Supreme Court justices who ruled against her as “puppets” and told a crowd of supporters that “the sentence was already written” before the trial began.
Fernández de Kirchner, who served two terms as president between 2007 and 2015, heads the leftist Peronist movement founded by post-war president Juan Perón and his wife Eva, also known as ‘Evita.’
The downfall of a woman who inspires reverence on the left and revulsion on the right has divided Argentines.
Thousands of her supporters, who see her as a key voice of resistance to Milei's agenda of rampant cost-cutting and deregulation, rallied around her outside her party headquarters on Tuesday evening.
Students at the University of Buenos Aires occupied three faculties and some protestors blocked roads leading to the capital with burning tyres.
Demonstrators continued to gather outside her home on Wednesday, following a night-time vigil, organised after news of the court’s decision broke.
The former president occasionally stepped out onto her balcony to wave at the cheering crowds.
At the same time, doctors from the Garrahan children’s hospital – who have spent weeks demanding better pay – joined retired pensioners in a demonstration in central Plaza de Mayo, as part of the latter’s weekly protests against the Milei government.
“There are women saying, ‘How can I take care of other people’s children if I can’t look after my own?’” said Yanina, a 32-year-old nurse who declined to give her surname, speaking among pro-CFK chants and placards decrying “proscription.”
Milei, who was criticised last year for saying he would "love to hammer the last nail into the coffin of Kirchnerismo, with Cristina Kirchner inside," welcomed the ruling.
"Justice. End," he wrote on X.
National Security Minister Patricia Bullrich also weighed in: “Three instances, hundreds of pieces of evidence, and all the guarantees of due process. It’s justice.”
In a statement, the Partido Justicialista called the decision an “anti-democratic political act” of “institutional gravity.”
“This is an unprecedented level of institutional gravity. We are not facing a judicial ruling, but rather an anti-democratic political act.
“The democracy that we have built over the last 40 years is based on the firm principle of the right of citizens to freely exercise popular sovereignty,” the party said.
The party led by Fernández de Kirchner argued that it is a matter of “putting the people's vote in chains.”
“It goes against the precepts on which we founded our country and our Constitution,” it said, adding that it is a fact that “deeply damages the credibility of Argentine institutions” and that “should awaken” the repudiation of political parties.
“Our party knows about proscriptions, illegal detentions, executions, bombings and disappearances.
“It will not be the first time that Argentina's economic power has attempted to resolve its main problem, Peronism, in an illegal, irregular and unconstitutional manner,” it added.
– TIMES/AFP/NA
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