CFK requests judge’s removal from investigation into attack

ATTACK ON VICE-PRESIDENT Vice-president’s legal team seeks recusal of Judge María Capuchetti in strong terms, accusing her of failing to investigate the so-called ‘Casablanca trail’ and alleging that she neither “knows nor wants to investigate” crime thor

Alegal team representing Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has formally requested the recusal of Judge María Eugenia Capuchetti from the case investigating the failed assassination attempt against the vice-president last September 1.

In a strongly worded complaint against the magistrate, lawyers José Ubeira and Marcos Aldazábal accused Capuchetti of “manifest partiality” against the vice-president and of overseeing “a series of clearly arbitrary resolutions” and causing a “total investigative paralysis.”

“We are facing one of the most important cases in our democratic history, and we need the investigation to be led by someone who is willing, and that the decisions are taken by an impartial judge, committed to truth and justice,” they insisted.

The judge’s conduct in the case so far has been, according to the plaintiffs, “at the very least, negligent,” and is due to a deliberate attitude on the part of the court.

The move was trailed by Fernández de Kirchner last week, when the two-term former president accused the judge of having “paralysed and boycotted the investigation” in a video on Twitter. Attempting to link opposition PRO deputy Gerardo Milman to the attack, the vice-president made allegations that have subsequently come to be known as the ‘Casablanca trail.’

The name refers to testimony provided a Frente de Todos advisor in the Chamber of Deputies, who alleged they had overheard Milman, a former Security Ministry official, in a café near Congress telling two aides (Ivana Bohdziewicz and Carolina Gómez Mónaco) that an attack might take place before it had actually occurred.

“I am resigned to the fact that the justice system will not investigate anything,” said Fernández de Kirchner in a post on Twitter last week.

“They want me as an accused, not as a victim,” said the former 2007 to 2015 president, who is facing a potential 12-year prison sentence for alleged corruption offences in another trial.

The Casablanca line of investigation (named for the café at which it took place) was, until recently, kept under judicial secrecy. It later resulted in an investigation for false testimony, a conclusion that Fernández de Kirchner’s legal team believes is patently incorrect.

The request also has a second factor, with the vice-president’s legal team also claiming that Caputcheti has a prior relationship with the former heads of the AFI intelligence services during the Cambiemos government, Gustavo Arribas and Silvia Majdalani.

‘NARCISSISTIC’ PERSONALITY

Fernando Andrés Sabag Montiel is a “narcissist” with an outlandish discourse who has compared himself to anti-apartheid freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, according to an expert report filed with the court investigating the failed attack.

The report, details of which were quoted in an article by the Télam state news agency, was requested by prosecutors in an attempt to establish the assailant’s motivation and frame of mind.

Sabag Montiel, who was detained moments after after he unsuccessfully tried to shoot Fernández de Kirchner, the former two-term president, at close range on September 1, has given little testimony while in custody. But details from the study, drawn up by forensic doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists at the request of prosecutors in the wake of the failed shooting attack, reveal that the 35-year-old has all but confessed to the attack.

“The act was simple. It is simpler than everyone thinks. Nobody told me. It doesn’t have so much mystique,” Sabag Montiel told the experts, according to judicial sources quoted by Télam, who said he is “calm now” the attack has passed.

Sabag Montiel has been charged with “attempted aggravated homicide” by Federal Judge María Eugenia Capuchetti, the judge overseeing the case. His partner Brenda Uliarte, 23, and 27-year-old Nicolás Gabriel Carrizo, considered to be the leader of the so-called ‘los copitos’ gang thought to be behind the attack, have also been detained and indicted.