Argentinian survives with luck: couple planned Kirchner assassination together

The Argentine vice president narrowly escapes an assassination attempt: the shot doesn't go off when a man points a gun at her head.

Argentinian survives with luck: couple planned Kirchner assassination together

The Argentine vice president narrowly escapes an assassination attempt: the shot doesn't go off when a man points a gun at her head. According to the responsible judge, the suspected shooter planned the attack on Kirchner together with his girlfriend.

According to the investigation, the attacker, who pointed a gun at Argentine Vice President Cristina Kirchner last Thursday, planned the crime together with his girlfriend. The suspected shooter, Fernando André Sabag Montiel, and his girlfriend Brenda Uliarte are accused of wanting to kill Kirchner "planned and by prior arrangement," the judge in charge said, according to the Telam news agency.

Montiel and Uliarte are both in custody. The partner of the alleged attacker was arrested on Sunday. She had previously shown herself surprised in a TV interview and said that she would never have expected her boyfriend to do such an act. She also stated that she had not seen him in the 48 hours before the crime. Recordings from surveillance cameras had shown that the 23-year-old had been with the alleged attacker on Thursday, the media reported, citing the investigators.

Montiel aimed a gun at Kirchner on Thursday when the left-wing politician and former head of state got out of a car in front of her apartment in the capital, Buenos Aires. However, the gun did not fire a shot for technical reasons.

The attack came amid rising tensions surrounding Kirchner, who was the South American country's president between 2007 and 2015. In a corruption trial last week, the public prosecutor's office had demanded a twelve-year prison sentence and a lifelong ban from office for the vice president. The process is about public tenders in Kirchner's political home province of Santa Cruz in the south of the country.