Last Friday, like every day since August 22, the former Argentine president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, stopped to greet her followers before entering her home in the wealthy -and anti-Kirchnerist- neighborhood of Recoleta, in Buenos Aires. escorted by several men in suits who formed an aisle through the crowd. From there an arm came out holding a pistol a few centimeters from Kirchner’s face and the frustrated assassin had time to pull the trigger, drop the weapon and try to sneak through the crowd. Only fortune prevented the death of the former president, in a frustrated attack that has generated enormous controversy over the ease with which it was carried out before the astonished gaze of the bodyguards and Kirchner herself, who did not understand what had happened until several minutes later. Without fences and with “federal forces “The first element that draws attention is the absence of any kind of barrier separating Kirchner from the crowd. The reason is that just a few days before, precisely the attempt to put up fences, had generated strong disturbances in the area. Hundreds of supporters of the former president who gathered near her house to show her support since the federal prosecutor accused her of corruption and requested a sentence of 12 years in prison and a lifelong disqualification from holding public office. The mayor of Buenos Aires and Kirchner’s political rival, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, ordered the erection of fences to prevent the free movement of Kirchner sympathizers through the Recoleta neighborhood. The attempt ended in riots with 14 injured police officers and the resignation of the fence by the local authorities. As a result of these events, the Minister of National Security, Aníbal Fernández, ordered “expand the custody of the vice president”, a security service security made up of a hundred bodyguards, who began to be supported by “federal forces”. Neither controls, nor plainclothes agents, nor action plan Surprisingly, none of this prevented an armed civilian from entering the crowd, drawing his weapon little distance from the former president and managed to pull the trigger without opposition. All this evidences a lack of controls among the crowd, as well as the absence of plainclothes officers, a common strategy in situations like this. As striking as the ease of the frustrated assassin in approaching Kirchner was the fact that she was not immediately evacuated after the assassination attempt, but continued for up to six minutes surrounded by a crowd, evidencing the inexistence of an action plan for situations such as that. The arrest of the man who wielded the weapon, later identified as Fernando Sabag Montiel, was not even carried out by the security forces, but by Kirchner’s own supporters present there until he was transferred to a police vehicle in the same area where it was kept for three hours. A complicated investigation The weapon, according to the BBC, citing local media, was trampled on by several people until it was seized by police officers, probably with significant damage that will make the investigation difficult. time to clarify all the details of the assassination attempt, especially what happened Gone in the days before, is the absence of security cameras. The reason, in this case, is in the will of Kirchner herself, who demanded her retirement in 2018 after denouncing that her real function was to “spy on her.” Sabag Montiel, the attacker, has refused to testify before the judge in charge of investigating the incident this Saturday, as detailed by judicial sources, so everything remains unknown in this case.