Argentina's Kirchner asks court to avoid jail time, citing assassination risk
BUENOS AIRES, June 13 (Reuters) - Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Argentina's leading opposition leader and a two-time former president, has petitioned a lower court to allow her to serve a sentence for corruption under house arrest, citing how several years ago she narrowly survived an assassination attempt.
The petition, which Kirchner shared on X, opens new tab on Friday, said that for security reasons she should be allowed to serve her six-year sentence at her home in Buenos Aires. She described the threat she might face as a former president and how during the corruption trial in 2022, she was the target of an assassination attempt that failed when the gunman's pistol, inches from her head, did not fire.
"This is not about a privilege," she wrote on X. "On the contrary, it follows strict reasons of personal security."
Kirchner, 72, is also entitled to ask the court for house arrest because of her age.
The criminal court is expected to rule on her petition in the coming days. Kirchner said on X that she would appear in court on Wednesday.
Argentina's Supreme Court earlier this week upheld a six-year sentence that found Kirchner guilty of fraud and banned her from holding public office. Kirchner, who had announced plans earlier this month to run in Buenos Aires' legislative elections, has called the decision politically motivated and the three Supreme Court judges "puppets."
The sentence has galvanized a show of support among Kirchner's Peronist movement, which had suffered from internal factions and disillusionment. Since the decision, large protests have taken place in downtown Buenos Aires and cut off local highways.
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New Statesman
3 hours ago
- New Statesman
Do our politicians understand the supreme court's gender ruling?
Illustration by Gary Waters / Ikon Images It was ironic that Sarah Owen MP opened her public questioning of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) chair by telling the public that the Women and Equalities Committee prided itself on 'listening, understanding and challenging respectfully to find progress on the matters we hold dear'. Over the two-and-a-bit hours that followed, there was little respect shown and not much listening going on at all. The hostile tone was set from the start. What was Baroness Kishwer Falkner going to do to improve the damaged reputation and loss of public trust in the EHRC, Owen asked in the session on Wednesday (11 June). Falkner responded: 'it's a real pleasure to be here… I don't think I could agree with your characterisation of the EHRC, and I hope as the time goes on in the next two hours that I will be able to prove those sentiments with hard facts.' Then the facts came: rather than trust being damaged, Falkner argued, it had rocketed under her leadership from just 35 per cent of the public holding the EHRC in a positive light when she assumed her role in 2020 to 81 per cent now. The Women and Equalities Committee, of which Owen is chair, has regular sessions with the leaders of the EHRC. This particular meeting comes after the Supreme Court's judgment in April that sex in the Equality Act 2010 meant biological sex. Predictably the judgment and the EHRC's response to it dominated proceedings. But few MPs seemed to understand what the judgment actually meant, let alone what the law is. 'Please do not be fearful,' Baroness Falkner said, explaining that in spite of the ruling, trans people are still able to invoke the provisions on direct discrimination, harassment, and indirect discrimination. They had not lost any rights, she insisted, as had the Supreme Court justices. It took more than 45 minutes for the Women and Equalities Committee to mention 'women and girls'. That was left to Conservative MP Rebecca Paul, who, with Rosie Duffield, sat physically apart from and in stark contrast to the rest of the committee. 'You said trans people have not lost a right, but they have,' Catherine Fookes, Labour MP for Monmouthshire, responded. 'They've lost the right to use the toilet of their choice.' 'I think we have a slight danger here of shooting the messenger', Baroness Falkner replied, explaining to the committee that in fact that 'right' had never existed in law. 'The Equality Act has always had exemptions for separate and single-sex spaces' and that these 'limited people to using only those facilities of their biology.' 'Whose rights win?' Sarah Owen asked, trans people or women? 'Trans people' rights are not going to change,' Falkner explained again. 'Women haven't won new rights. What has happened here is that a statute – the [Equality] Act has been interpreted by the highest court in the land, and it has been clarified. The rights remain extant as they always were when Parliament… passed the Equality Act.' Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe It took the Labour MP for North Warwickshire and Bedworth, Rachel Taylor, close to eight minutes to establish that it was not – under the law – possible to have a women's only walking club that included trans women. 'I think I'm clear on your answer that if I want to set up a women's walking association that excludes cis [non-trans] men, then I cannot include transgender women. Is that what you've said?' Falkner nodded in reply. During the exchange, Owen chimed in: 'How could you tell, and how could Rachel tell whether I was a cisgendered woman or whether I was a trans woman, can you tell Baroness Faulkner by looking at me?' 'I could make an informed judgment,' the EHRC chair replied. 'Society is not based on policing outside toilets,' she continued. 'Society is based on trust', Falkner explained, 'on trust that in a workplace which provides single-sex toilets, that the people who will use those toilets will generally… abide by that.' Responding to a question from Rosie Duffield about intimidation and bullying of EHRC members, Baroness Falkner's voice faltered with emotion. 'What bothers me more than my own personal security is that our staff should be able to come to a place and work in safety', she told the committee, 'and that has been somewhat lacking in the last several years.' She began to share a 'reflection' – comparing the 'dignified, respectful' responses of women who felt their rights had been threatened, to those advocating for trans rights. Women, Falkner said, had frequently used the 'last resort of a tribunal or a court to pursue justice for themselves or their loved ones.' Yet, while appreciating that trans people were a vulnerable group, 'the level of agitation they can cause in terms of personal attacks, libellous attacks, defamation,' and attacks on EHRC staff's family members stood in stark contrast. 'It has got to stop', Falkner said. During this impassioned statement, Owen cut her off, to audible gasps and shocked sighs of 'no' from some of those listening. The committee chair wanted to make sure there 'wasn't an inadvertent, unwitting tarnishing of all campaigners and activists'. Kishwer Falkner leaves the EHRC in November, as her (already extended) term ends. The government kept her in post for another year to provide stability in leadership of the equalities regulator. But the signs are that her preferred successor, Mary-Ann Stephenson, will receive no more civil a response from Owen's committee when they question her later in the year. Immediately after her candidature was announced on 5 June, trans rights activists began scouring for evidence of potential unsavoury views and behaviour. 'Dr Stephenson has a reputation for transphobia,' one Reddit user wrote, urging others to help compile a list of alleged misdemeanors. 'Please don't put vague things… it needs to be along the lines of 'she did transphobic thing X at date Y in location Z.' So far, the offences Stephenson has apparently committed include signing a couple of open letters in the Guardian in 2015 and 2017, defending the right to free speech and saying that women should not face violence for voicing their opinions, and in 2020 appearing on a podcast for feminist charity FiLiA and at a Woman's Place UK conference (where she spoke about women in the workplace). 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The clerk of the Women and Equalities Select Committee has responded almost immediately to those who have written to object, even taking the time to do so on a weekend. 'Thank you for writing to the Committee. The Committee notes your demands,' he said to one letter writer. 'The Committee expects to cover the concerns you raise when it meets with the EHRC next week,' he replied to another – something that appeared to have been borne out by the session with Baroness Falkner. In a further reply, the clerk pointed out that while 'select committees do not have power of veto in appointment hearings… if they really didn't like a candidate, a failure of the committee to support the appointment could make the government further reflect on whether to take it forwards.' To some, it might seem odd that anyone would object to Dr Mary-Ann Stephenson's candidature. 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'We are not going to issue a letter to government saying we think the Supreme Court has got this wrong and you need to establish a new Supreme Court,' Falkner made clear. 'That's not going to happen.' As MP after MP demanded to know how the EHRC was planning to win back the trust of trans people, Baroness Falkner made perhaps the most prescient point of the hostile encounter. 'I'm going to be slightly personal here,' she replied. The trans community, she said, supposedly had a great deal of trust in her predecessor, David Isaac, who had also been a chair of Stonewall. 'Perhaps we have to recognise that when people are lobbyists or advocates for a particular cause, the cause that they represent generates greater trust from that particular group.' But it was the EHRC's job to be impartial. 'Trust is something that we all want, but it is a commodity which is built up through credibility, impartiality and fairness.' If trans people accepted that the EHRC's job was to interpret the law of the land, then they will find the final code of practice is something they can trust, Falkner said. The session ended where it began, with Falkner civil, the chair, Sarah Owen otherwise. 'We're hoping that the settlement of this issue by the Supreme Court will lead to a calming down of the atmosphere,' Falkner said. Many share that hope. But committee hearings like this will certainly not help. [See more: Inside the SNP civil war] Related
The Herald Scotland
6 hours ago
- The Herald Scotland
No more Edinburgh Book Festival for me – where did it all go wrong?
One other event at the book festival I recall, for different reasons, was a session with the writer Yasmin Alibhai-Brown. I can't remember why I went to see her now because she's the sort of harrumphing lefty who sets off my allergies, but perhaps I figured it's good to listen to a range of views, which it is. I certainly remember being irritated when she laid into Ukip as an English not a Scottish problem even though the party had just done well in Scotland at the European elections. The same sort of flawed reasoning persists now with Reform. But the audience seemed to like it. They applauded at the end, and shuffled out for tea and biscuits. I mention the Alibhai-Brown event in particular because even then, ten years ago, the problems with the Edinburgh Book Festival were starting to become obvious. The lack of diversity on the stage and in the audience, by which I particularly mean diversity of class. The weak, and sometimes execrable, chairing of events that fails to challenge or properly explore the writer's opinions and assumptions. And most important of all, the tendency to platform writers like Alibhai-Brown and unplatform or ignore writers of a different or more conservative persuasion. In the end, it meant the festival became a place I enjoyed less and less, and eventually I just stopped going. But, you know, it really is good to listen to a range of views and I'm a hopeful sort of person on the whole, so this year, like every year, I looked at the line-up on the festival website to see if there was something good and if things had changed, and I scrolled and scrolled and saw that the answer was no. Things appear to be just as bad as ever, worse in fact, and the worry is that the problems at the book festival may have started to rot it from the inside. You start to wonder: how long will it last? The most obvious symptom of the problems is the lack of diversity on stage, which is worse than ever. One of the biggest stories of the last year – and the focus of one of the biggest-selling books of the year – was the trans debate and the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of 'woman', and yet you will not find a trace of it on the festival line-up. The book in question, The Women Who Wouldn't Wheest, was edited by Susan Dalgety and Lucy Hunter Blackburn, so why haven't they been invited? Is it because – unlike one of the big guests of the festival Nicola Sturgeon – they are seen to be on the wrong side of the debate? Yes, of course it is. Read more The chairman of the festival, Alan Little, rather gave the game away when he said the festival should be 'a place where progressive and nuanced discussion can happen in a safe and respectful space'. He's spot on with nuanced – we need it badly – but why only progressive? Why not traditionalist or conservative as well? And what's with 'safe'? It's become one of those words certain activists use to ratchet up the pressure, to hystericalise, but would the festival be unsafe because the line-up included Susan Dalgety or Lucy Hunter Blackburn? The only thing that would be unsafe would be the consensus that's dominated the festival and still does. The organisers would probably say in their defence that there would be a threat of disruption from activists – indeed, that was reason they gave for dropping Baillie Gifford as one of their sponsors. A number of activists, you will remember, a very small number, demanded the investment company be dropped on the grounds it invests in fossil fuels and sad to say, the organisers caved. They said they could not be expected to deliver a festival that was safe – there's that word again – because there was a threat of disruption from activists and so they ended their relationship with Baillie Gifford but more importantly they ended their relationship with Baillie Gifford's money. But it didn't have to be that way. First of all, if everyone buckled as quickly as the festival did over the threat of disruption to the free expression of views, we'd be in a very unpleasant place indeed; their weakness is pathetic. They could also have borrowed some of the stoicism of the Fringe which faced similar pressure over Baillie Gifford from the same sort of activists, but stood firm and it all came to nothing. To put it another way, everyone was perfectly safe. The Edinburgh Book Festival (Image: Newsquest) The organisers of the book festival also appear to be guilty of a kind of economic and practical idiocy that now threatens their future. There are some people who object to corporate sponsorship of arts events – so what: the only alternative is an increase in public money and that ain't happenin'. Baillie Gifford also invests in fossil fuels – so what: it invests far more in clean energy, and the objections of the activists led to the cancellation of a million pounds in money for the arts. The danger here is that the arts world ends up, in the words of the director of the Science Museum Ian Blatchford, eaten alive by its own piety. And the risks are particularly high for book festivals aren't they? We saw what happened to Aye Write in Glasgow when it failed to get funding from Creative Scotland; it only went ahead after a donation from the charity set up by the Lottery winner Colin Weir. The Edinburgh book festival is also going ahead this year thanks largely to a donation from Ian Rankin. But how long before the activists start digging into the personal views of the philanthropists writing cheques? And is this what they want: the arts funded by a few wealthy individuals? It doesn't sound all that progressive to me. Better, I think, to try to build more robust festivals that have a chance of lasting and that must mean some changes. First, encourage a broad diversity of views and opinions at the festival that will attract a broader and more diverse audience. Secondly, drop the piety and encourage corporate sponsorship because public money is not coming to save you. And thirdly, be robust when the activists rock up and shout 'unsafe!' They only have power because you give it to them. Reject them. Ignore them. And carry on. Mark Smith is a Herald features writer and opinion writer
Reuters
12 hours ago
- Reuters
Boca Juniors defender Costa gets special U.S. visa for Club World Cup following earlier rejection
June 13 (Reuters) - Boca Juniors defender Ayrton Costa will be able to take part in the Club World Cup in the United States following a u-turn by U.S. immigration officials who had previously rejected his visa application, the Argentine club said on Friday. "Ayrton Costa has been granted a 26-day special visa," a club spokesperson told Reuters. Costa's visa application was subject to a criminal complaint in his native Argentina, relating to an aggravated robbery in 2018, which he avoided trial for by accepting a probationary sentence in 2023. However, U.S. officials previously ruled that he could not enter the country as he was still serving his sentence. The press office at the U.S. embassy in Argentina told Reuters that they cannot discuss individual visa applications. Boca Juniors will open the tournament in Miami on Monday against Portuguese side Benfica.
