A yet-to-be-identified man has been apprehended following his assassination attempt on ex-Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Fernandez was welcomed by supporters outside her residence when a guy brandished a pistol at her – he was quickly overpowered by security personnel and taken into custody.
A video which was sighted by Africa Daily News, New York shows a man in a throng of people pointing a gun at the vice president’s face from close range, however, the politician was lucky – the gun didn’t fire.
Following the event outside her Buenos Aires residence, Ms. de Kirchner was unharmed.
The politician was returning home from court – she has faced a corruption trial. Though She dismissed the accusations to be false.
Sergio Massa, Argentina’s minister of the economy, referred to the attempted shooting as an ‘attempted assassination.’
‘When hate and violence prevail over debate, societies are destroyed and situations like these arise: attempted assassination,’ he tweeted.
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A video that was released on the local media showed the man holding a pistol inches from her face and appeared to have considered firing. She then Dodge down her head, luckily no bullet nothing was shot.
Another video that has been shared online shows people in the throng attempting to separate Ms. de Kirchner from the culprit.
A firearm was discovered a few meters away from the scene, a police spokesperson told the news agency Reuters after an ‘armed’ man had been detained close to Ms. De Kirchner’s residence. The man may have Brazilian roots, they assumed.
While the trial is ongoing, hundreds of rioters have amassed outside the 69-year-old residence in the capital in recent days.
While she served as president from 2007 to 2015, Ms. de Kirchner is alleged to have defrauded the state and participated in a plan to embezzle public funds.
Prosecutors have requested that the former president suffers a lifelong ban from politics and a 12-year jail term if found guilty at trial.
Meanwhile, Ms. de Kirchner relishes parliamentary immunity due to her position as Senate president, so, she won’t be sentenced to prison until the nation’s Supreme Court upheld her conviction or she ended up losing her Senate seat in the upcoming elections at the end of 2023.
Upon leaving office as president, Ms. Kirchner was implicated in several other corruption cases. It will likely take several months before the trial’s judgment is announced.
