The Supreme Court of Argentina confirms the prison sentence of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, former president of Argentina and one of the most polarizing political figures in the country, was sentenced to prison on Tuesday and prohibited life after the Supreme Court confirmed her condemnation of corruption.

The decision is likely to deepen political tensions in the country and intervenes after Mrs. Kirchner, who was the target of An assassination attempt Three years ago, plans announced for a political return.

Supporters blocked the main highways around the capital, Buenos Aires, before the court’s decision against the left Ms. Kirchner, who clashed several times with Argentina’s right -wing president Javier Milei, while the main unions had threatened the national strikes.

The Supreme Court rejected an appeal from Ms. Kirchner, cementing a six -year sentence pronounced by a lower court which had discovered that it had defrauded the state during its two presidents of president, from 2007 to 2015.

However, Ms. Kirchner, 72, is unlikely to serve a significant prison sentence, because the Argentinian law often allows residential assignment for people over the age of 70. The lower court will determine if Ms. Kirchner obtains home detention.

The former president could be detained behind the bars of a police station for a few days until a judge approves her detention at home, said Andrés Gil Domínguez, professor of constitutional law at the University of Buenos Aires.

Brake of Argentinian policy for more than three decades, Ms. Kirchner remains a figure of division. While a large part of the country considers its presidency to be synonymous with economic mismanagement and corruption, it continues to order a faithful basis which attributes large social programs to it.

Ms. Kirchner, who was also vice-president from 2019 to 2023, faced numerous accusations of corruption. She was convicted in 2022 To direct the work of public routes in a southern province to a family friend and a business partner.

Ms. Kirchner denounced the accusations as politically motivated, accusing opponents of the armament of the judiciary to slow down her influence.

The Court determined that the program had started under her husband and predecessor, born Kirchner, and continued his two presidential terms. He had been governor of the southern province of Santa Cruz and was president from 2003 to 2007. Mr. Kirchner died in 2010.

Since 2024, she has directed the justicist party, the main opposition force to Mr. Milei and the largest political platform for peronism, the populist nationalist movement which has shaped a large part of the modern political history of Argentina.

Mr. Milei frequently blamed Ms. Kirchner, as well as her husband, for years of economic mismanagement and systemic corruption that sent the country to an economic spiral down. Mr. Milei won his duties in 2023 by promising to reduce public spending and revise the Argentinian economy heavy from the state.

Kirchner recently announced that she presented herself for a siege in the provincial legislature of Buenos Aires in the elections this year. She would have been a big favorite, and a victory would have granted her immunity to serve the sentence.

“Coincidence is not a political category,” Kirchner told supporters on Monday as she was preparing for the decision of the highest Argentine court. “He only made us announce an candidacy a week ago so that the demons are unleashed.”

It characterized efforts to imprison it as a means of calming its criticism of the right -wing economic policies of Mr. Milei, which included large austerity measures.

“Go ahead, throw me in prison,” she said on Monday. “Do you really believe that it will repair something? I could be behind bars, but people will be worse day by day.”

During Ms. Kirchner’s trial in 2022, the supporters gathered in front of her apartment in Buenos Aires every day to show solidarity.

In September of the same year, a man at the entrance to his building pointed out a pistol loaded at close range. The weapon is blocked and she was not injured. The accused shooter and two others are detained and in trials.

The former president is faced with several other legal issues, including accusations of money laundering, by orchestrating a corruption program involving public works and by complicating with Iran to hide his alleged role in the bombing in 1994 of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires who killed 85 people.