The trial into the attempted assassination of former president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in September 2022 will begin in three months' time.
A date of June 26 was confirmed by prosecutor Gabriela Baigún, who said the trial would take place at Tribunal Oral Federal Court No. 6.
A total of 277 witnesses – including Fernández de Kirchner herself and the two police officers who were in charge of her security on the night in question – are set to testify, local press reported.
Fernando Sabag Montiel, Brenda Uliarte and Nicolás Carrizo will be tried in the case of "attempted aggravated homicide." They will remain in custody throughout the trial.
The trial against the trio will be judged by magistrates Sabrina Namer, Ignacio Fornari and Adrián Grünberg.
Assassination attempt
On September 1, 2022, Sabag Montiel, armed with a pistol, mingled with a group of sympathisers in front of Fernández de Kirchner’s flat, approached her and pulled the trigger several times without firing a shot.
Sabag Montiel, 36 and a Brazilian citizen, and his girlfriend Brenda Uliarte, 23, are formally accused of being co-authors of "an attempted homicide aggravated by premeditation, the action of two or more people and the use of a firearm."
Carrizo, 27, who employed the couple as street-sellers, is indicted as "a necessary participant." He allegedly gave the assailant a gun to kill the vice-president, although the weapon was not the one used on the day of the attack.
At the time of the attack, a court in Buenos Aires was trying two-term ex-president Fernández de Kirchner (2007-2015) for corruption. She was later sentenced to six years in prison and disqualified from public office.
She has appealed that conviction, attributing it to a persecution campaign against her and declining to run in last October’s general elections.
The sentence has yet to be confirmed by a higher court, but a review into the conviction has begun, with the prosecution requesting that the former vice-president’s prison sentence be doubled to 12 years.
On the first anniversary of the assassination attempt last September, then-president Alberto Fernández reproached the "singular sluggishness" of the justice system in advancing in this case.
What’s to come
Uliarte’s lawyer Carlos Telleldín said last year that his client would testify in court that the persons who approached to harass Fernández de Kirchner in the door of her flat received money from City Hall officials under then Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta.
The former vice-president has asked the court without success to investigate the presumed links between the detained and persons close to ex-president Mauricio Macri, incorporating them into the case.
Speaking last week, José Manuel Ubeira, the former president's lawyer, endorsed the decision to move to trial but warned that the investigation into who financed the attack still needs to move forward.
"There was financing by Revolución Federal," Ubeira said.
– TIMES/PERFIL/AFP
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