Argentina: Outgoing president says he was threatened in presidential helicopter

Europe 1 with AFP / Photo credit: SEBASTIAN HIPPERDINGER / FAROCOLECTIVO / HANS LUCAS / HANS LUCAS VIA AFP 18:34 p.m., November 26, 2023

Outgoing Argentine President Alberto Fernandez, who is due to complete his term on December 10, said on Sunday that he had been threatened several times anonymously over the past year while travelling in the presidential helicopter.

"When I was president, on two or three occasions, while traveling by helicopter (from the presidential palace) from Casa Rosada to (the official residence of) Olivos, (the laser dot of) a rifle scope appeared inside the helicopter," Alberto Fernandez told the Argentine weekly Perfil. "I don't think the intention was to shoot down the helicopter. I don't know. The intention was for me to get the message that there was a scope pointed at the helicopter," he added.

"We were silent"

Alberto Fernández, who is due to be succeeded in two weeks' time by the controversial ultra-liberal Javier Milei, elected on 19 November, said: "It didn't happen to me once, it happened to me two, three or four times, and with my bodyguards we saw it, and we kept silent, because we said to ourselves, 'Let's not make a problem with it.'"

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These threats came "after" the failed assassination attempt on his vice-president Cristina Kirchner in September 2022, Fernandez added, but without giving specific dates. On 1 September 2022, a gunman targeted Cristina Kirchner outside her home in Buenos Aires, but failed to open a shot. After the event, Fernández said he was targeted "with a laser beam (...), someone with a gun pointing the laser at" the presidential helicopter.

"It has to be understood," he told Perfil, that the families of political leaders "live permanently threatened on social networks or threatened by e-mail or threatened by WhatsApp, all the time."