He has been described as a mythomaniac with a marginal life. He sports tattoos of Nazi symbols and took photos of himself holding a gun. Fernando Sabag Montiel, who pulled the trigger against Cristina Kirchner, is still unknown in Argentina.
Source: AFP
Without known political activism, he was arrested as soon as he attacked Vice President Kirchner on September 1, at the doors of his house in Buenos Aires, placing a Bersa 32 pistol centimeters from his face that did not fire.
Sabag “is not a hitman (because) he made emotional mistakes,” said the Minister of Security of the province of Buenos Aires, Sergio Berni.
“He rushed to the scene where he was going to carry out his plans and was unable to load the weapon in a state of stress,” Berni surmised, considering that Kirchner “is miraculously alive.”
She had come so close, blending in with a group of Kirchner supporters who were waiting to greet her and ask for her autograph, eight days after the Prosecutor’s Office had requested twelve years in prison for her and perpetual political disqualification for alleged corruption.
– Selfies and security cameras –
The assassination attempt was previously “planned” by Sabag, 35, and his girlfriend Brenda Uliarte, 23, according to the indictment of justice.
Although the file is under summary secrecy, photos taken from their cell phones or from security cameras in the area of the attack have filled the pages of the newspapers. Thus, both are seen exhibiting the weapon allegedly used, or selling cotton candy in the surroundings of Kirchner’s house in the days prior to the events.
In his social networks, now closed, Sabag had shown himself with a black sun tattooed on his elbow and an iron cross in his hand. But the investigators have not verified his active membership in far-right groups.
For sociologist Jorge Elbaum, his tattoos “demonstrate a certain neo-Nazi identification, something that does not require much rationality or critical awareness, but rather a sense of belonging to an integrating logic of hate.”
Of an Argentine mother and a Chilean father, Sabag was born in Sao Paulo (Brazil) but came to Argentina as a child. She did not have a formal job. Some 100 9mm bullets were found in her house on the outskirts of Buenos Aires amidst the disorder and the stench of garbage.
He had been arrested in 2021 for illegal possession of a knife, but the case was closed.
– Aware vs influenceable –
A first psychological evaluation showed that Sabag is “located in time and space.”
In his cell, he has received no visitors. Her mother died in 2017 and his father lives in Chile, according to local press reports.
He owns two cars that he worked with for a chauffeured travel app.
“He is very quiet, he always walked with his head down, untidy, disheveled,” said Pablo, a neighbor of Sabag and a mechanic for his cars who, he said, “abandoned them on the street because he had no money to fix them.”
Justice investigates a group of five friends of the attackers, all alleged cotton candy vendors who testified as witnesses.
Months ago, Sabag had criticized the social policies of the government of Alberto Fernández, when he was interviewed in the middle of a street protest.
Uliarte declared that she did not believe her boyfriend “capable of committing that act beyond the differences he has with this lady”, in reference to Kirchner.
The night of the attack, she left the scene, apparently uninterested in her boyfriend’s arrest.
Investigators found that Brenda offered pornographic videos on social networks under another identity.
As it came to light, her mother abandoned her, and she suffered sexual abuse as a child.
Her father, Leonardo Uliarte, who declared himself an “ultra-Kirchnerist,” told the Clarín newspaper that his daughter “is manipulated, she doesn’t like politics.”
As he referred, Brenda lost a newborn son in 2020 and since then “he is not in his right mind.”
Andrés, her ex-partner and father of the baby, described her as a young woman “influenced, unable to plan or participate in something like what happened” and slipped that she suffers from a “maturational delay”.
Her house was raided because the young woman was there right after the attack. Investigators found a white bag at the scene that she was carrying that day.
