BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA (AP) – Judicial and law enforcement authorities were investigating yesterday whether a Brazilian citizen who appears to have tried to assassinate Argentina’s politically powerful Vice President Cristina Fernández was a lone gunman or whether he was part of a larger organisation.
Fernando André Sabag Montiel is a 35-year-old street vendor who has lived in Argentina since 1998, a Security Ministry official told The Associated Press (AP).
“There is no confirmed hypothesis,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorised to talk on the record. “Everything is being investigated”. Montiel does not have a criminal record.
The assassination attempt has shaken Argentina, a country with a history of political violence, and allies of Fernández, who was president 2007-2015, have called for a march in downtown Buenos Aires to express their support and repudiate the incident.
Earlier, officials had said the alleged gunman used a .32-calibre Bersa to try to kill Fernández.
The only reason the assassination attempt failed was because the handgun misfired, President Alberto Fernández, who is not related to the vice president, said on Thursday night in a national broadcast in which he declared a national holiday yesterday in light of the incident.
“A man pointed a firearm at her head and pulled the trigger,” the president said, adding the firearm was loaded with five bullets but “didn’t fire even though the trigger was pulled”.
The man was quickly overpowered by the vice president’s security officers in the incident on Thursday night, officials said.
The vice president did not appear to have suffered any injury.
Gina De Bai, a witness who was near the vice president during the incident, told AP she heard “the sound of the trigger being pulled”.
She said she didn’t realise it was a handgun until the man was rushed by security personnel.
President Fernández called it “the most serious incident since we recovered democracy” in 1983 after a military dictatorship and urged political leaders, and society at large, to repudiate the attempted shooting.
