rigorousintuition.ca

Argentina: Dark Investigation

After the arrest of the subject who tried to assassinate the vice president of Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, on September 1, the errors and inconsistencies in the police investigation of the attack have contributed to increasing the atmosphere of tension, mistrust and deterioration in the political life of that South American nation.

The most scandalous defect in the case is the loss of the cell phone information of the only arrested suspect, Fernando Andrés Sabag Montiel, who on Thursday night last week twice pulled the trigger of a semi-automatic pistol pointed at the the official's face a few centimeters away.

The device data, essential for clarifying the failed assassination, disappeared at some point in the chain of custody, from the headquarters of the Federal Police to which the accused was taken, and whose agents were unsuccessful in unlocking it, to the court who leads the cause.

At some point the sealed envelope in which the device was transported was opened, and the Airport Security Police, who immediately went to try to extract the data from the mobile phone, reported having received the open envelope and the device, reset and switched on.

Those responsible for the transfer were the custodians of the judge handling the case, María Eugenia Capuchetti.

On the other hand, the police report that Sabag Montiel used a 7.65 mm caliber Bersa Lusber pistol, whose photo was disclosed by the media, despite the fact that it did not have the fingerprints of the detainee, has been questioned by experts who affirm that the weapon that was seen in the various videos that captured the moment of the failed attack was rather a Bersa Thunder caliber .380 ACP, without it being possible to establish for sure which of the two versions is the correct one.

One fact seems clearly established: if the pistol did not work, it was because the handler omitted the necessary procedure to mount a bullet in the chamber. And with this background, it is ominous, to say the least, that shortly after the attack the Clarín newspaper, with an oligarchic affiliation, published an infographic explaining the "correct" way to activate that model of pistol.

Another dark element of the assassination attempt is the behavior of the vice president's guards, whose actions have been pointed out by several analysts as inefficient, in the least worst case.

The truth is that the investigation has been tainted from its first steps by contradictions and equivocal acts that could be the result of extreme police clumsiness or a desire to cover up and divert justice.

It must be considered that all of the above occurs in a highly polarized environment and against the backdrop of a judicial offensive that is not only directed against the vice president, but also targets the Peronist government of Alberto Fernández and hate campaigns fueled by the oligarchic right. and its media with an unequivocally coup bias.

In this circumstance, not a few opposition voices have sought to present the failed attack against Fernández de Kirchner as a “set-up” or a “self-attack” and have minimized the possibility that it is the result of a criminal political conspiracy. The errors and inconsistencies of the investigation strengthen the second of those suspicions.

Wombaticus Rex » Tue Sep 06, 2022 9:20 am wrote:

Note that this is a googlified translation of an opinion piece published in Mexican paper La Journada.