Three people will stand trial for the attempted assassination of former President and Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner starting June 26. 

Fernando Sabag Montiel, Brenda Uliarte and Nicolás Carrizo are accused of planning and executing the September 2022 attack, which Kirchner survived when the gun did not fire. The trio are known as the “Cotton Candy Gang” because they used to sell the sweet treat on the streets.

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Judges Sabrina Namer, Ignacio Fornari and Adrián Grünberg will be in charge of questioning witnesses and examining the evidence collected by Judge María Eugenia Capuchetti and prosecutor Carlos Rívolo, who led the investigation. The court will call over 270 witnesses.

CFK assassination attempt

Cristina Kirchner was greeting her supporters outside her home in Buenos Aires at around 9 p.m. on September 1, 2022, when Montiel snuck through the crowd, pointed a gun at her face at point blank range, and pulled the trigger. The gun did not go off, and Montiel was arrested on the spot. 

The attack was condemned as anti-democratic by world leaders, and thousands marched the following day to condemn it.

Capuchetti and Rívolo focused their investigation on Montiel, Uliarte and Carrizo, announcing in June 2023 that the three suspects would be sent to trial. They proceeded to close the investigation, a move Kirchner criticized.

Her legal team alleges that Capuchetti failed to fully investigate possible intellectual authors, arguing that the immediate perpetrators’ associates had ties with right-wing parties and the far-right group Revolución Federal.

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On September 23, 2022, Jorge Abello, an advisor to a Peronist deputy, testified that he heard deputy Gerardo Milman of the right-wing PRO party talking about the attack before it happened. Milman was the campaign chief of current security minister and PRO President Patricia Bullrich at the time. 

In a restaurant near Congress, he allegedly told two colleagues: “When they kill her I’ll be on my way to the coast.” In May 2023, Milman’s former secretary Ivana Bohdziewicz testified that the contents of her phone had been wiped clean at offices belonging to a group led by Bullrich.

Milman has denied making the comments.Four members of Revolución Federal were charged with incitement to collective violence in February 2023, but the judge refused to charge them with criminal association, arguing that hate speech and events organized by the group were not directly related to the Kirchner assassination attempt.