A third suspect has been arrested over the attempted assassination of Argentina’s vice-president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, as investigators pursue suspicions that the attack was not the act of a lone gunman.
Fernández was unharmed during the incident on 1 September, when Fernando Andrés Sabag Montiel, 35, pulled the trigger of his handgun inches away from her face. The gun failed to fire, and the vice-president’s supporters quickly subdued the would-be assassin.
Sabag Montiel’s girlfriend, Brenda Uliarte, who was also present at the scene, was arrested a few hours later.
On Tuesday, Agustina Díaz, a friend of the couple, was arrested, reportedly after a forensic examination of Uliarte’s cellphone revealed messages between her, Sabag Montiel and Díaz regarding the attack.
Other cellphones were seized by police Tuesday in at least three more raids in the city of Buenos Aires and the greater Buenos Aires area.
The dramatic moment at which the gun failed to fire was caught live on video by followers who have been gathering regularly outside Fernández de Kirchner’s home in Buenos Aires to express their support after she was charged with a number of corruption offenses.
Uliarte’s cellphone also reportedly revealed a possible previous attempt on the vice-president on the night of 27 August, when Fernández de Kirchner addressed supporters from a makeshift stage before returning to her apartment.
“It’s too late now, it’s midnight,” Sabag Montiel said in a message to Uliarte. “She’s upstairs but I don’t think she’ll come out [again], so that’s it, let’s leave it.”
“We have to start going into action,” Uliarte said in another message, “let’s put a molotov [cocktail] in the Casa Rosada [Argentina’s presidential palace].”
Investigators have also reportedly found video on Sabag Montiel’s cellphone in which he is seen practicing with the Bersa handgun he used in the attempted attack.
None of the three suspects has yet been formally charged or entered a plea.
Sabag Montiel and Uliarte are expected to be charged in court this week with attempted homicide.
President Albert Fernández (who is not related to the vice-president) said on Tuesday that messages on the seized cellphones also pointed to an assassination plot against him as well. “The conversations of the accused are becoming known and they said that I would be next,” he said.
Fernández de Kirchner is fervently loved by her supporters, followers of the Peronist legacy of three-time president Juan Perón and his wife, Evita. But she is reviled by anti-Peronists who accuse her of corruption during her two terms as president in 2007-2015.