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This is the moment Argentina’s vice president had a handgun pointed in her face before the weapon jams.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner stepped out of her car outside her Buenos Aires home last night when she had the near miss.
Stood among a crowd of her supporters was a gunman who pointed his weapon at the politician’s head at point blank range.
But the man was quickly overpowered by Ms Fernández de Kirchner’s security officers and was arrested.
President Alberto Fernandez said the pistol jammed when the assailant tried to fire it.
‘A man pointed a firearm at her head and pulled the trigger,’ he said in a national broadcast following the incident.
He said the firearm was loaded with five bullets, but ‘didn’t fire even though the trigger was pulled’.
The vice president, herself a former leader of the country, did not appear to have suffered any injury.
Eyewitness Gina De Bai said she heard ‘the sound of the trigger being pulled’, but didn’t realise it was a handgun until the man was rushed by security.
President Fernandez, who is not related to the vice president, called it ‘the most serious incident since we recovered democracy’ in 1983 after the country’s military dictatorship.
He urged political leaders, and society at large, to repudiate the attempted shooting.
The attack came as the vice president is facing a trial for alleged acts of corruption during her 2007-2015 presidency – charges that she vehemently denies and that have led her supporters to surround her home in the upscale Recoleta area of Argentina’s capital.
The alleged gunman was identified as Fernando Andre Sabag Montiel, a Brazilian with Argentine nationality, said an official at the Security Ministry.
He does not have a criminal record, the official said, adding that the weapon was a .32-calibre Bersa.
The president declared Friday a holiday ‘so the Argentine people can, in peace and harmony, express itself in defence of life, democracy and in solidarity with our vice president’.
Supporters of the vice president have been gathering in the streets surrounding her home since last week, when a prosecutor called for a 12-year sentence for Ms Fernández de Kirchner, as well as a life-long prohibition in holding public office in the corruption case.
Shortly after the incident, government officials were quick to decry what they called an assassination attempt.
‘When hate and violence are imposed over the debate of ideas, societies are destroyed and generate situations like the one seen today: an assassination attempt,’ economy minister Sergio Massa said.
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