The opinion held that Fernando Sabag Montiel and Brenda Uliarte should be tried as co-authors of attempted “double qualified homicide” for treachery and premeditation. Gabriel Carrizo, the head of the sugar flake vendors, was considered a secondary participant. At least two months of planning. According to the prosecutor, “They acted on their own.” CFK reviews.
Despite the questioning and opposition of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s complaint, the prosecutor of the investigation into the attempted assassination of the vice president terminated the investigation and made a formal request to send the three detainees to trial. In a 197-page opinion, he maintained that Fernando Sabag Montiel, the man who tried to shoot (and missed) centimeters from the vice president’s head, and Brenda Uliarte, who was with him at the scene, should be tried as co-authors of the attempted murder. “Doubly qualified homicide due to treachery and the premeditated cooperation of two or more people, aggravated by the use of a firearm.” Gabriel Carrizo, the head of the sugar flake vendors, is considered a secondary participant. For the prosecutor, this group began planning and designing the murder at least two months before and did not need a large structure or much money. He concluded that they acted on their own since there is no evidence that there was any organization, political party, or the person who “financed, planned, covered up or contributed in any way with the defendants to carry out the fact under investigation.”
The vice president described this step in the case as “a new act of consecration of impunity” and remarked that the opinion directly omits to refer to lines of investigation beyond the three detainees as material authors. PRO deputy Gerardo Milman, for example, is mentioned in passing in a list of material and testimonies collected. There, however, CFK remarked, the latest statement from his former secretary Ivana Bodhziewizcz is not included, who revealed that they took her to delete the contents of her cell phone, in a full investigation, to an office belonging to Patricia Bullrich where Milman and an expert were waiting for her. The vice president’s text was published on her Twitter account,
In theory, the pending leads and evidence requested by the complaint will continue to be investigated separately. But prosecutor Carlos Rívolo has already taken a position by saying that the detainees were violent loose men who, in any case, spent a good deal of time planning the murder. CFK maintained that dividing “complex causes” “into little pieces” is a “clear practice to seek impunity.”
“Like a Trojan Horse”
This Thursday will mark nine months since the assassination attempt. The first detainee, the same night of September 1, was Sabag Montiel, whom militants who were going to support CFK in the middle of the Highway trial managed to catch. Uliarte almost manages to escape even though she was supposedly being watched. She was arrested on September 4 on top of a train. Carrizo was imprisoned ten days later.
Sabag Montiel describing the opinion, took advantage of the moment when CFK greeted the people around her due to the “confusion and untidiness generated by the crowd”, among which she mixed until she was very close. The vice president was in a defenseless situation, says the prosecutor. The Bersa brand .32 caliber pistol, Lusber 84 model that she carried, was fit to fire and loaded with five cartridges. Sabag pulled the trigger but there was no bullet lodged in the chamber and the shot missed. Rívolo questioned custody: “The vice-presidential custody operation, as it was carried out (…), failed to dissuade, warn or prevent the criminal activity carried out by Sabag Montiel,” he said. She recalled that she is being investigated in another case.
The weapon was in the hands of Sabag Montiel since April 20 of last year. It had the numbering filed. It had been from an acquaintance of his who passed away. A photo of the weapon with the projectiles resting on the mattress where he slept with Uliarte was recovered from the kidnapped cell phone. Photos of her with the gun were also found. The prosecutor says that at least since July both talked about killing the vice president and that part of the plan was to blend in with the many CFK supporters.
“It’s a matter of organization and acting like a Trojan horse,” said Uliarte on July 5. He added: “I know how to use an iron, I am not a sniper but something is something. You have to find a place to be a strategist”; “And you don’t necessarily need to be seen”; “I’m not going to be stupid to order myself when you die” “and I’m not going to go alone”. She also spoke of her desire to “blow up the Quinta de Olivos or the Casa Rosada with Molotov cocktails”; “I do have the ovaries to do it”; “I don’t need to pay it, I can be it,” she said. On August 23, Brenda told Carrizo: “Someone needs to go with an iron and give Cristina a cork.” By that date, the mobilizations in support of CFK near her house were already massive. The same day Brenda and Sabag talk about renting an apartment in the neighborhood with a good view of CFK’s house. Then they discarded it.
On the cell phone of another of the “drinks,” there were very explicit messages from Sabag Montiel. On July 30: “I wanted to wait for Cristina to come out and put a cork in her.” In the middle of August: “I would like to meet Cristina to become the seller of flakes and put a cork in her.” On August 28, she recounted that she had gone near the house to sell cotton candy. “I’m going to go with the iron to Cristina’s house and I’m going to put a cork in there if I’m going to go out in the chronicle seriously,” said the 23rd. All that week the area of CFK’s house was full of people who gave him support after the allegation of the prosecutor Diego Luciani in the trial of Vialidad.
August 27, the prosecutor recalled, was the first frustrated assassination attempt. There were mobilizations in Recoleta all day. The Buenos Aires police repressed. At the end of the day, Cristina spoke from a small improvised stage a few meters from her house. Around midnight, Sabag Montiel wrote to Uliarte: “No, he already…he got inside and the stage, the amphitheater, they took him out, and I was…I touched Axel Kiciloff’s back and he got into a Toyota Etios eh and he left a mess, and she’s up there, but I don’t think she’s going to come out so she’s gone, stop, I’m going there, stay there, don’t bring anything”. He also told her that there was a C5N camera and that few people were left. Rívolo deduces from the conversation that Uliarte had the weapon. The two of them reasoned about the best time to shoot and Sabag imagined possible outcomes. That same night Uliarte spoke with her friend Agustina Díaz (scheduled as “Love of my Life”) and told her: “Today I become San Martín”; “I ordered Vice Cristina to be killed”; “I sent a guy to kill Cristi.” The prosecutor requested the dismissal of Díaz.
Other messages reveal that Sabag Montiel was advised to use the Bersa, with a certain David AJ Ricciardone. He asked him how he should “double action burst fire” to perform “unloaded snapshots” with the Bersa pistol. “…I want to kill Cristina…”, he said. On August 28, he searched on Google for “Cristina Kirchner’s birth chart” and the next day “Christina Fernández de Kirchner’s Birth Chart, Government of Cristina.”
Reed
For the prosecution, Carrizo — the owner of the sugar flake machine, which his group of vendors had with Sabag and Uliarte — planned what he intended to be a murder and provided a 22-caliber weapon. On the night of the attempted murder, Carrizo sent several messages. He told a friend: “We just tried to kill Cristina”, “the weapon is mine, friend”. He told something similar to his half-sister, Andrea Posadas, and he complains because the attack was planned for a week later. He also tells her that it seemed strange to him that it had failed because his revolver was working fine. When he finds out that the one used had been a Bersa, he tells her that the weapon was not hers. He insists anyway: “We are determined to kill that bitch.” He boasts that he is going to “finish the job”.
No structure or financing
The ruling affirms that up to this point in the investigation it could not be proven that there had been “an organization of any kind, political party or supporter, person or group of people who have, in any way, financed, planned, covered up or contributed in any way to form with the defendants to carry out the fact investigated”. “Of all the phones seized and analyzed, no link emerged from those named with any group or person that at this point would even allow us to suspect the possibility that they had been assisted in the event. Similarly, no elements have been found relevant in telephone cross-linking, nor the geolocation of the devices, nor their financial movements,” he wrote.
There are no references in the opinion to the importance of the loss of information from Sabag Montiel’s cell phone when he was sent to the expert and it appeared in an open envelope. The prosecutor says the attack did not require too many resources or funding. They moved by public transport, they had not bought the weapon (they are also accused of its possession) and they did not even rent the apartment. In the end, he refers to the fact that the conversations found and the statements contained “expressions of political hatred” and “anger and disagreement with the current National Government that seem to have stimulated the execution of his criminal plan.” The vice president questioned that this investigation has never been linked to the one dealing with the ultra-right organization Revolución Federal, that on the same date stirred up hatred and whose leader, Jonathan Morel, described the same strategy to kill CFK as the one put together by Sabag and Uliarte. Brenda had contact with that group, just like Milman, but this was left up in the air.
