Vice President
Argentina: Kirchner criticizes investigators after the attack
Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, former President and current Vice President of Argentina. photo
© Rodrigo Abd/AP/dpa
In September 2022, an assassin aimed at Argentina’s Vice President at close range, but no shot was fired. The investigation is now complete – but the debate about the incident continues.
After the failed assassination attempt on Argentine Vice President Cristina Kirchner, the former head of state of the South American country sharply criticized the public prosecutor’s office. “The entire investigation is characterized by not wanting to know the truth,” wrote the ex-president (2007-2015) on her website on Monday.
The public prosecutor’s office had previously completed the investigation and requested the opening of the main hearing against three suspects. Accordingly, the alleged assassin, his girlfriend and an accomplice should be tried. The accused had planned the act alone, there was no evidence of backers, the investigators said. Kirchner, on the other hand, suspects the opposition was behind the failed attack and described the conclusion of the investigation as a “further act of impunity”.
At the beginning of September last year, a man outside Kirchner’s apartment in Buenos Aires pointed a pistol at the vice president at close range and pulled the trigger at least once. However, no shot was fired. He was then struck down by Kirchner’s supporters and arrested by the police.
Kirchner is as popular as it is controversial in Argentina. She is considered to be the real string puller in President Alberto Fernández’s left-wing government. She was recently sentenced to six years in prison for corruption. However, she sees herself as a victim of a politically motivated judiciary. “There is no justice for me, not as an accused, not as a victim. They want me behind bars or dead,” she wrote at the end of her statement on the Internet.