Photo: Julian Alvarez.
Nicolás Gabriel Carrizo, one of those detained for the assassination attempt on Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, told the judges on Wednesday that he can no longer stand being imprisoned and that the messages referring to the attack were the product of his “black humor”, while the lawsuit representing the Vice President demanded that her prosecution and that of another defendant, Agustina Díaz, be confirmed.
“I can’t take it anymore”Carrizo told the judges of the Federal Chamber of Buenos Aires in a few brief words said in person at the Retiro courts after more than two hours of hearing, in which the Vice President’s complaint was heard to be confirmed his prosecution as an alleged secondary participant in the assassination attempt on September 1 last.
Carrizo’s defense requested for his part that he be granted “total freedom” or his detention be moderated with, for example, house arrest, and that the prosecution be declared null and void. Díaz’s defense called for the prosecution to be revoked as “premature” and “whimsical” and that he be released immediately, while the lawsuit also called for the prosecution to be confirmed.
In the morning, Carrizo was transferred from the prison where he is serving preventive detention, while Díaz followed the hearing for almost three hours by videoconference from the Ezeiza prison.
The judges Pablo Bertuzzi and Mariano Llorens listened to the lawyer Marcos Aldazabal, for the Vice President’s complaint, and to the defenders of the two detainees: Gastón Marano, in the case of Carrizo, and Javier Molina, for Agustina Díaz.
The third member of room I of the Court of Appeals, Leopoldo Bruglia, did not attend the hearing on the second floor of Comodoro Py 2002 because he was on leave, but later he will have access to his recording, before deciding whether to confirm the prosecutions with prison preventive order issued by federal judge María Eugenia Capuchetti.
“I’m locked up there, thinking every day why I did such a joke. I thought that Brenda (Uliarte, another of the detainees) had nothing to do with it,” said Carrizo in front of the judges in a few words at the end of the hearing. .
Nicholas Carrizo.
The owner of the machine with which snowflakes were made that were sold by the detainees as co-authors of the attempted murder -Fernando Sabag Montiel, who triggered the weapon and his girlfriend Uliarte- said that the latter “came with another version”
“I never suspected, I want to get out of there (for jail). I can’t take it anymore”he told the judges, sitting at one of the heads of the oval table in the courtroom, on the opposite side of which the magistrates sat.
Carrizo further said that people who know him “know the kind of humor I have. I’ve made worse jokes, I’m not what the media says.”
After the attack and the arrest at Sabag Montiel, Uliarte “said he had to visit Nando” in jail when days later the group of snowflake vendors planned to “work on the coast in January.”
From the Ezeiza prison, Agustina Díaz addressed the judges to ask them to “make the right decision” and allow her to “return” to her home with her family.
Agustina Díaz is processed in the case.
“My parents never left me alone, I ask to return to my family,” he concluded.
The position of Cristina’s lawyer
At the beginning of the hearing, shortly after 10 o’clock, the Vice President’s lawyer, Marcos Aldazabal, maintained that Carrizo’s intervention as a secondary participant in the event “is more than proven.”
Cristina Fernandez’s complaint asked to “reject annulments” raised by Carrizo’s defense because “all the constitutional guarantees” of due process were respected and he considered that the accused “is immersed in the planning of the event.”
“Planning existed and was relevant; As the investigation progresses, we hope that more things will be clarified, “said the lawyer when setting the position of the lawsuit that he represents in this hearing.
Aldazabal postulated as a complaint that the embargo imposed on each accused be lowered and that the figure of “treachery” be ruled out in what happened, but that the decision be confirmed in everything else.
Diaz’s defense
For his part, Javier Molina, Díaz’s lawyer, asked that the prosecution be revoked, alleging that “he did not know what was happening” in relation to the planning of an attack against the former president.
For this reason, the lawyer demanded that “the prosecution be revoked, rebranded as a cover-up and excluded from punishment” by virtue of his close friendship with Uliarte and that his immediate release be ordered.
“She’s Not a Part of Anything” and his messages with Brenda Uliarte, his friend prosecuted as co-author of the assassination attempt, do not prove a role of secondary participant “in a crime of this institutional gravity”
“The judge lacked courage” to dictate the lack of merit and release her, she also said about the prosecution that Capuchetti issued.
The lawyer maintained that Díaz and Uliarte were friends and wondered: “Can’t one have a lying friend?” about the messages they exchanged on WhatsApp related to Uliarte’s decision to attack the Vice President.
Díaz is Uliarte’s friend who, after the failed attack against Fernández de Kirchner, suggested that he delete all the information on his cell phone and that, according to the messages they exchanged on the WhatsApp messaging system, he knew that she had bought a gun.
Carrizo’s defense
Meanwhile, Gastón Marano, Carrizo’s lawyer, proclaimed his client’s innocence and assured that in his prosecution “his constitutional guarantees were violated”
“He is in a state of absolute defenselessness. He did not make any contribution to the fact”pointed out the lawyer, and asked that the nullity of the prosecution be ruled and that the lack of merit be ruled in any case “until the missing evidence such as summons of witnesses and access to reserved files can be produced”
Regarding the WhatsApp messages that were found on his cell phone and based his prosecution, Carrizo’s defense said the same as the defendant: that it was “black humor” in the framework of exchanges with a group that handled the same codes.
Carrizo entered the courtroom of the Buenos Aires Federal Chamber on the second floor of Comodoro Py 2002 in the midst of a strict security operation and protected by members of the Federal Penitentiary Service who covered him with two shields.
The defendant remained seated at the same table with the lawyers and judges, except in a brief intermediate room in which he asked to be transferred to a bathroom, which took place in the midst of strong custody by the Federal Penitentiary Service.
The processed
Diaz and Carrizo they are prosecuted with preventive detention by federal judge María Eugenia Capuchetti, as alleged secondary participants of the attempted assassination of September 1 and his lawyers appealed this decision.
The magistrate considered when prosecuting them that “the events of September 1 (the day of the assassination attempt) were the final chapter of the criminal plan that had previously been agreed upon, designed and studied by Brenda Elizabeth Uliarte, Fernando André Sabag Montiel, Nicolás Gabriel Carrizo and Agustina Mariel Diaz”.
The judge accused Carrizo and Díaz as secondary participants criminally responsible for the crime of “qualified homicide, aggravated by the use of firearms, treachery and the premeditated competition of two or more people, to the degree of attempt” with seizures for 100 million weights each.
Sagab Montiel, who fired the weapon against the Vice President without the shot being fired, and his girlfriend Uliarte did not appeal the prosecutions, which have already been finalized, nor the preventive detentions, by decision of their official defenses.
In their case, they were charged as co-authors of the attempted murder committed on the night of September 1 in Juncal and Uruguay.
