Former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner testified Wednesday in the trial of three people charged in an unsuccessful attempt to kill her in 2022, though she argued the planners and financiers of the attack had yet to be found.
The three suspects in the dock, alleged Fernández de Kirchner, were merely the executors of the plan.
"We have the material authors but not to the ideologues and financiers," said the veteran 71-year-old politician as she came face-to-face with 37-year-old Fernando Sabag Montiel, the man accused of having pointed a gun at her head at point blank range and pulling the trigger twice. The gun misfired.
The other two accused are Montiel's former partner Brenda Uliarte, 25, charged as a co-conspirator, and Nicolás Carrizo, 29, their former employer and alleged accomplice.
Fernández de Kirchner slammed her critics, stating that in the months prior to her attempted assassination there was a "crescendo of violence" against her person.
"There was a lot of violence and curiously those who went to the door of my house to insult me vanished after the attack," she remarked at the start of her testimony.
"There was symbolic violence and not so symbolic having to do with me being a woman," maintained Fernández de Kirchner, showing the courtroom covers of media publications with illustrations or drawings showing her crucified or with punches in her face, among them the Clarín newspaper and Noticias magazine.
"Nobody ever said anything about this but as the first woman to be elected president, I suffered these aggressions," said the former president.
Sabag Montiel told the court in June his was "an act of justice" for "the social good."
Fernández de "Kirchner is corrupt, she steals and harms society," he testified.
Broke down
Fernández de Kirchner answered questions from the prosecution and defence lawyers for just over an hour.
Clutching a rosary, she broke down as she recounted the effects on her family of the attack. Her young granddaughter, she said, refused to leave her room "because she was afraid of being killed" and had to receive psychological treatment.
"A family that endures this kind of thing suffers consequences," she testified.
The assassination attempt, caught on video, took place as Fernández de Kirchner mingled with a crowd that had gathered outside her home on September 1, 2022, to show support as she was on trial for fraud.
Sabag Montiel was caught by her followers and handed over to police.
Fernández went on to affirm that "she did not realise" that a trigger had been pulled against her and that she was informed of the assassination attempt after the fact.
The dramatic incident drew global condemnation.
The former vice-president alleges a wider political plot privately financed by her opponents.
Three months after the attack, Fernández de Kirchner was sentenced to six years in jail for corruption in a trial she said was a political witch hunt. She is appealing the verdict.
The ex-president maintained that while "today it would be impossible to launch a coup d’état in the old style, there are other ways" of dislodging people against certain policies.
But on the other hand, she pointed out that "if not coordinated with the hegemonic media and the judicial branch, where the economic powers are concentrated," such situations could not arise.
"They want to eliminate those of us opposed to the handover [of the country] with a gunshot or a court sentence, as in the Clarín headline: 'The bullet did not find its mark but the sentence did.' There is a very complex society which they have psychologically unhinged," she indicated.
Fernández de Kirchner further highlighted that "when you see the people who have been elected to represent the Argentines saying the things they do in the media, it’s worrying," pointing out that "those who govern resemble the governed because otherwise we would be facing an anomaly."
Political support
The ex-president’s testimony was eagerly anticipated. She left her home at 9am on Wednesday morning, heading for Comodoro Py, where she began her courthouse testimony after 9.30am.
Meanwhile, aligned political and social leaders made themselves present at Instituto Patria, just off Congress square, where Fernández de Kirchner headed after concluding her testimony to greet the organisations and diverse sectors gathering there to receive her.
Her defence lawyers were also reproachful that "the investigation into the presumed political organisations surrounding the assailants was never deepened."
"Tomorrow I’m going to testify in the trial of the material authors of the attempted assassination of my person perpetrated on September 1, 2022. And the intellectual authors and those who financed them? They’re fine, thank you very much, sleeping protected by Comodoro Py [federal courthouse]," wrote Fernández de Kirchner on her X account on Tuesday night.
The trial seeks to clarify the events occurring outside the door of Cristina Kirchner’s apartment building and to that end the TOF (Tribunal Oral Federal) 6 court has summoned almost 300 witnesses, an extensive list including political figures, security personnel, acquaintances of the accused, forensic and other experts, intelligence analysts and witnesses on the spot who might supply crucial details as to the events and the motives behind the attack.
It was the first time that Fernández de Kircher found herself in the same room as the trio being tried for the unsuccessful attack.
Sabag Montiel assures that he pulled the trigger of a pistol within inches of the head of the ex-vice-president but that the gun failed to go off.
The others implicated in the case are Uliarte, accused of being the co-author with Sabag Montiel, and Carrizo, their ex-employer, singled out by the prosecution as the "planner" after incriminating messages were found in his mobile telephone after the attempt.
"All the messages were jokes," explained Carrizo in his July 3 statement, assuring that "he would never kill a person."
Uliarte was supposed to testify on the same day but after a few minutes answering questions, she asked that the hearing be quashed because she did not feel up to it.
Sabag Montiel, Uliarte and Carrizo face serious charges, including attempted homicide doubly aggravated by malice aforethought and the premeditated conspiracy of two or more people, as well as the use of a firearm.
The trial, which is estimated to stretch between six and 12 months, is centred on the assailant, his former girlfriend and the street vendor employing them both without probing their presumed ideology or possible financial support. These two aspects form part of another case which is still being investigated.
Sabag Montiel holds himself to be solely responsible for the crime which carries prison sentences of up to 25 years.
The hearings are held every Wednesday in the Retiro courthouse under the judges Sabrina Namer, Adrián Grunberg and Ignacio Fornari.
– TIMES/NA/PERFIL/AFP
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