For the Argentine justice there was premeditation, and several, of the attack against the former president and current vice president Cristina Kirchner last week. The judge in charge of the investigation formally withheld a “planning and a prior agreement” against the aggressor and his companion, the only ones detained at this stage.
The 35-year-old attacker and his 23-year-old partner are charged with attempted murder of Cristina Kirchner “with planning and prior agreement between them,” according to the accusation, cited in full by several Argentine media, including the official Télam agency.
The accusation remains provisional at this stage of the preliminary investigation, for a period of ten working days, but it attests to the growing conviction of the investigation that the attack was prepared.
A couple of suspects involved
Fernando André Sabag Montiel, 35, was arrested Thursday night at the scene of the attack, when he had just pointed a pistol one meter from the vice president’s head, in the midst of a crowd of supporters with whom she was mixed. in front of her house.
For some reason not yet officially confirmed, the shot did not fire, although the gun, a 7.65-caliber Bersa pistol, was loaded and in working order, but apparently without a bullet lodged in the chamber.
Brenda Ulliarte, his young companion, was arrested on Sunday night at a train station in Buenos Aires. In television interviews in the 48 hours after the attack, she assured that she had not seen her friend for two days. The analysis of the video surveillance images has shown that both were at the scene of the attack that same night, according to judicial sources cited by the media.
Brenda Uliarte “was present in the vicinity where they arrived together, and it was determined that they had in their possession the firearm seized with its ammunition from a previous date, at least since August 5,” the indictment indicates.
The motives of the attacker remain unclear.
The two defendants did not give a statement during their appearance before the judge, Sabag Montiel limiting himself to declaring, according to the same sources: “Brenda had nothing to do with it.”
A week after the attack, the motivations and profile of Cristina Kirchner’s aggressor remain unclear, although investigators have been gaining the certainty that it was premeditated, the scope and number of participants still to be determined.
The research is therefore interested in a group of five young people, close to the couple. They were heard after appearing spontaneously after the arrest of Brenda Ulliarte. Their phones were seized and their exchanges of the last few days analyzed.
Fernando André Sabag Montiel, a Brazilian national, the son of an Argentine and a Chilean, lived in Argentina since childhood. He had no known recent employment, but according to his testimony, he had worked as a VTC driver. In 2021 he was arrested for carrying a 35 cm knife.
Sanctions against the custody of Kirchner
According to photographs on his Instagram account, Fernando André Sabag Montiel had several tattoos, including a black sun and a cross similar to the Iron Cross, associated with Nazi symbology. But so far no sign of active politicization has been found.
Testimonies from neighbors and from a teenage friend describe him as a rather withdrawn character, a “mythomaniac” or “marginal”, a bit lost according to this friend. Lately, according to witnesses, he was in financial trouble: two cars he owned had been sitting in a garage for months because he couldn’t afford the repairs, according to the mechanic.
The attack on Cristina Kirchner, 69, a figurehead of the Peronist left, and still influential in Argentine politics, seven years after her departure from the presidency, sparked demonstrations. They brought together tens of thousands of people in a country in a state of shock, where the government and opposition accuse each other of having created a climate of “hate.”
Another concrete consequence, the Government relieved part of the vice president’s security service on Wednesday, considering “that they did not have the expected level,” according to official sources cited by Télam.
Source: BFM TV
