Pair sentenced in 2022 attempted murder of ex-Argentina president Cristina Kirchner

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (CN) — Argentine Federal Court 6 sentenced a man and a woman on Wednesday for the attempted assassination of former Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in 2022.

Fernando André Sabag Montiel, 38, and Brenda Elizabeth Uliarte, 26, were found guilty of attempted murder. Both have been detained for the past three years since their arrest shortly after Sabag Montiel pointed a gun at Fernández de Kirchner and pulled the trigger inches away from her face, twice. The bullet did not fire and Fernández de Kirchner was not injured.

Sabag Montiel was sentenced to 10 years for the attempt, but will serve an additional four years for a conviction of possessing and distributing child abuse images.

Uliarte — Sabag Montiel’s girlfriend at the time — was given eight years and two months for being “a necessary participant” in the assassination attempt.

The pair faced up to 20 years in prison for the attempted assassination and subsequent charges. The prosecution and Fernandez de Kirchner’s attorneys requested 15 years for Sabag Montiel and 14 for Uliarte. Another man, Gabriel Carrizo, initially pointed as the leader of the gang, was acquitted.

Sabag Montiel’s defense said he was unfit to plead and requested acquittal, while Uliarte’s said that she was no longer able to sit trial and requested its suspension.

Trial began in June 2024, and more than 150 witnesses testified before the court. During her statement, Fernández de Kirchner said that the material authors of the crime sat in court, while its intellectual authors — and those who had funded it —  didn’t.

“This is a debt to democracy,” she said, then.

Fernández de Kirchner heads Argentina’s most prominent political party, Peronism — opposite to Javier Milei’s libertarian administration.

A controversial character that has raised both fanaticism and hatred over the years she was active in politics — twice as president between 2007 and 2015, and once as vice president between 2019 and 2023 — she is now serving a six-year house arrest for corruption charges.

Some testimonies claimed that Gerardo Milman, a lawmaker and close ally to one of Fernández de Kirchner’s main political antagonists, was involved in the planning of the murder. Investigations against him were recently closed.

Fernández de Kirchner argued during trial that the attempt against her life were fueled by a hate speech that had increased significantly during the pandemic.

“The court can’t surpass what the investigation sends to trial,” said her attorney, Marcos Aldazabal, who added that he thinks the initial parts of the process were flawed. “We expect the full sentence to mention something about the context where this happened.”

The full judgment document by Judges Sabrina Namer, Adrián Grünberg and Ignacio Fornari is expected to be released in the upcoming months.

The night of the attack, Sep. 1, 2022, Fernández de Kirchner was signing copies of her book before a crowd of supporters as she returned from a session in the Senate. That was when Sabag Montiel approached her with the gun and attempted to shoot her. Uliarte, according to testimony from a man close to them, was standing meters away from the attempt.

The couple had been seen in previous gatherings outside of Fernandez de Kirchner’s flat, prior to the night of the murder attempt, selling cotton candy — for which they were dubbed “The Cotton Candy Gang” by the media.

In his statement during the first days of the trial, Sabag Montiel said “I wanted to kill Cristina, and Brenda Uliarte wanted her to die.”

WhatsApp messages retrieved from their phones during the investigation showed that Uliarte had told Sabag Montiel that Argentina needed “blood to run,” and that she wanted to “free Argentina.”

“It’s not easy, but we need to find a way,” Uliarte told him.

During the trial, Sabag Montiel also said he believed Fernández de Kirchner was “a thief and a murderer,” and that he had undergone many financial problems that led him to decide to murder the then-vice-president.

“I felt humiliated,” he said. “I didn’t want to do it, but I felt like I had to.”

Some of the ties that were found between the duo and other opponents to Fernández de Kirchner, including right-wing lawmakers, were not included in the case brought to trial. Aldazábal said that he hoped the full judgment document would mention that there had been a “weak” investigation.

He also said he had spoken with Fernández de Kirchner shortly after the verdict, and that their team will wait to read the court’s arguments in order to decide whether they will appeal for longer sentences.

“The violent speech and aggression we see every day provokes concrete actions like these,” Aldazábal said. “At first, we thought that the attempt would lead to more consciousness over this matter, but we’re in an increasingly worse scenario in terms of political violence.”

A recent study published by consultancy group Ad Hoc showed that political violence on social media in Argentina increased by 90% since 2023, the year when Milei was elected to office. Between January 2023 and June 2025, the study showed, the president had shared over 1,500 insults on his social media accounts. However, they said, the issue affects actors across the entire political spectrum.

“If this amount of hate speech continues, it will happen again,” Aldazábal said. “Maybe not against Cristina again, but it will.”

Courthouse News reporter Lucía Cholakian Herrera is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Follow @luciacholakian