The Argentine vice president narrowly avoided murder after a gunman’s weapon jammed while aiming at it.
The footage shows the moment when Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, surrounded by a crowd of supporters, came face to face with her loaded gun.
The former president has returned home from the courthouse, where she is accused of corruption. She denies the allegations.
Police said the gunman, identified by local media as a 35-year-old Brazilian, was arrested. They are trying to determine the reason for the attack on the left-wing politician, president of Argentina from 2007 to 2015, and the first lady four years earlier.
President Alberto Fernández revealed that the gun was loaded with five bullets, but it did not fire when it was activated.
The video circulating on social media shows the gun emerging from the crowd as Mrs. Fernández de Kirchner approaches. She initially seems confused by what is happening and she dives to retrieve a fallen object.
In another video, the people in the crowd appear to be trying to block Ms. Fernández de Kirchner from suspecting her gunman, who came within inches of her. Crowds have gathered outside his home in recent nights to show support as he fights allegations of state fraud and involvement in a plan to hijack public funds while he was president.
A police spokesman previously told Reuters news agency that a weapon was found a few meters from the crime scene after the man was arrested.
Police called the suspect Fernando Andrés Sabag Montiel, a Brazilian who has lived in Argentina since he arrived in the country as a child in 1996. He was previously arrested in 2021 while carrying a 35 cm knife.
Photos of him, taken from his social media posts and posted on Argentine newspaper websites, depicted him with tattoos associated with neo-Nazi groups. After searching his home, the police confiscated two boxes containing 100 bullets, according to investigators quoted by the newspaper La Nación.
Also read-Flood: Pakistan Calls For More International Aid
La Nación also reported that Pope Francis called Ms. Fernández de Kirchner and had a “brief and cordial” conversation with her.
The pope of Argentine origin, who received the vice-president several times at the Vatican, also sent her a telegram expressing “solidarity and closeness”.
He added that he prayed that “social harmony and respect for democratic values” prevail in his home country.
Ms. Fernández de Kirchner has yet to comment. She is accused of defrauding the state and fraudulently awarding public works in her Patagonian stronghold while she was president between 2007 and 2015.
If sentenced to trial, prosecutors demanded that the former president receive 12 years in prison and a life sentence from politics.
However, Ms. Fernández de Kirchner is the President of the Senate and she, therefore, enjoys parliamentary immunity. She would not have been jailed unless her sentence was upheld by the country’s Supreme Court, or she would have lost her Senate seat in the upcoming elections in late 2023.
Ms. Fernández de Kirchner has been subjected to numerous other corruption trials since she was president. The verdict in this process is expected to take several months.
