In November of 2000, a group of mostly Cuban-American anti-Castro activists were arrested in Panama City and accused of plotting to kill Fidel Castro at the Ibero-American summit. Beyond the alleged assassination plan, the men were charged with possessing explosives, conspiring against the public order and immigration offenses. One defendant died and the charge of conspiring to kill Castro has been thrown out by the courts. But eight men remain in the dock to face the balance of the accusations.

Five of these men --- Cuban-Americans Luis Posada Carriles (the group's alleged leader), Guillermo Novo, Pedro Remón and Gaspar Jiménez, and Panamanian José Hurtado, have been incarcerated without bail for the past two years.

The gist of the accusation is that a group of men entered Panama under assumed names, imported more than 30 pounds of C-4 plastic explosives, smaller amounts of RDX and PTNT primer explosives, electrical detonation devices and other bomb-making paraphernalia In concert with several Panama residents of Cuban or Panamanian nationality, they plotted to set off a deadly explosion at a University of Panama reception for the Cuban dictator. The most serious charge, the men intended to kill Fidel Castro, was dismissed in a curious ruling based upon the lack of --- or the disappearance of --- a detonating fuse among the alleged bomb making materials seized.

The accused say that they were indeed in Panama on a secret mission. They say that they were informed that the chief of Fidel Castro's bodyguards wanted to defect and came here to pull off that political coup. Instead, they walked into a trap set by the Cuban government whose agents planted the evidence that would suggest a bomb conspiracy.

In Panama, as a procedural safeguard against corrupt, politically motivated or inept prosecutors, the victims, intended victims or families or representatives of the same, have the right to hire accusing attorneys. These are private prosecutors who have some but not all of the powers of the Public Ministry to pursue a case. In this instance, it was alleged that in the attempt to kill Cuba's head of state, the defendants intended to set off a powerful explosion at a reception. The reception for Fidel Castro was sponsored by student leftist groups, labor unions and the Kuna General Congress. 1,500 people attended.

The Cuban government and the reception's hosts are represented in this case by accusing attorneys. The most prominent of these is Rafael Rodríguez whose several clients include the SUNTRACS construction workers' union. Silvio Guerra represents the Revolutionary Student Front (FER-29) and six other student groups. Julio Berríos is the lawyer for the labor organization National Workers Center (CNT). The Kuna General Congress was represented by attorney Ascario Morales.

On December 5, there was a pretrial hearing scheduled But the defendants had moved to accelerate the proceedings and hold the trial itself that day. The Public Ministry represented by prosecutor Arquímedes Sáenz, had nothing other than a few obsequious words for Magistrate Enrique Paniza to say on this day. However, the accusing attorneys bitterly opposed the defense effort to hold the trial that day. They brought a pair of motions to postpone the proceedings.

One of the motions was based upon a technicality about due notice. The motion was to allow time for higher courts to consider the accusing attorneys' appeal to amend the charges. This was to add a count of attempted murder against those attending the university reception. A few days earlier, the Supreme Court had upheld a lower tribunal's decision to throw out the most serious of the charges that had been lodged against the defendants.

These charges were that they had conspired to murder Fidel Castro. It would logically follow that the comptemplated crime would have killed a number of other people in attendance if the allegations if the allegations that Posada Carriles et al planned to set off 30-plus pounds of plastic explosives in a room full of 1,500 people are true attendance. They were represented on this day by their private accusing attorneys.

The defense attorneys railed against the motions, alleging that they were mere dilatory tactics. They were led by Posada Carriles's lawyer, former Attorney General Rogelio Cruz.

Ana Belfón represents José Hurtado, the one Panamanian defendant who has been unable to get bail and whom she says was just an innocent taxi driver hired to drive the Cuban-Americans around. She noted that five of the men in the defendants' dock had already spent more than two years behind bars awaiting trial.

Rafael Rodríguez argued that "This case will go down in the history of Panama and the history of Latin America as an important event in the struggle against international terrorism."

There were angry outbursts, exceptions to purported personal attacks, and learned discourses on the minutiae of Panamanian criminal procedure. There were arguments between the accusing attorneys and the judge. The show included pouting, shouting, posturing and speeches aimed at the audience.

The audience was an interesting story in its own right. This public interest in the trial caused the proceedings to be moved from Magistrate Paniza's tiny courtroom in the courthouse into which part of the old Gorgas Hospital complex has been converted to the much larger Maritime Tribunal premises. The latter venue was the US Federal District Court in Canal Zone times.

The audience included a couple of dozen Cuban-Americans who flew to Panama for the hearing. Most of them were relatives of the accused but there were also a number of prominent anti-Castro activists. Also on hand were a Who's Who of the Panamanian left and this country's most prominent labor leaders. Representatives of the Cuban Embassy, the national and international press corps and various Panamanian government entities were there too.

When it seemed as if the judge had ruled against the accusing attorneys' motions, there was a fresh round of arguments between the latter and the magistrate. These sorts of exchanges would typically earn an attorney a contempt citation were they to occur in a US court.

Paniza ruled that the trial would proceed and there was laughing to be seen on all sides when the banging of fists and rustling of papers was all over.

In the defendants' dock, men who had alternatively looked grim or bored cracked smiles for the first time that morning. The prospects of them getting home for Christmas had just surmounted a serious obstacle --- so it seemed.

Meanwhile, Julio Berríos' firm was preparing and filing an appeal of Paniza's decision in other offices.

The trial began with the reading of the file.

Surely not the WHOLE file? The accused hoped to get home this year. That document sat in multiple folders on a low table in front of the magistrate's bench. "Multiple" as in eight stacks of folders, each more than a foot tall. Place in one pile, the file would be more than nine feet high.

That part of the file that would be read into evidence at this trial was recited by a relay team of judicial secretaries. There appeared to be woeful omissions that would jump out in the mind of any lawyer who has taken part in the defense or prosecution of a bomb conspiracy case.

Yes, we heard of bomb-making materials interred near a coconut tree in the Mañanitas section of Tocumen. Sketchy evidenced suggested that some of the defendants brought those items into Panama via the Paso Canoas border crossing from Costa Rica. We heard about a towel with explosives residue. We were told of a red Mitsubishi being seen at various places.

For example, when the record got to the plastic Costa Rican supermarket bag in which some of the bomb parts were allegedly found, there was no evidence presented about whose fingerprints, if anybody's, were on that bag.

Were fingerprint tests done and one or more of the defendants' fingers could be shown to have touched that bag, it would be important evidence favoring the prosecution.

Were the bag tested and none of the defendants' prints found on it, that would helped the defense.

In neither case would the proof be conclusive --- bags with patsies' prints can be planted, and bomb conspirators can carefully go about their work wearing latex gloves. But in an international terrorism investigation, one would hope that there would be an exhaustive and state-of-the-art collection of fingerprints. And that the results of this --- whatever they might be --- would figure in the trial.

Similarly, there was no mention of DNA evidence or the lack thereof. For example, if a person handled a towel that explosives had touched, ordinarily a tiny hair or a fleck of dead skin would remain. The DNA testing could conclusively identify that person. The same would normally apply if a person had carried a bag full of bomb parts. In fact, earlier in the investigation a prosecutor requested an order for hair samples of several defendants to see if these matched hairs found in a suitcase in which it is believed that the explosives were transported.

Defense lawyers objected to the tests and the prosecution dropped the matter. Yes, it is true that in Panama DNA testing for legal purposes has been stalled by an argument over political patronage This argument is essentially whether Attorney General José Antonio Sossa, a former Christian Democrat legislator or the Arnulfista Moscoso administration, will get to choose the labs that do the work. It's true that in the ordinary course of things, Panamanian investigators lack the funds to have DNA tests conducted. But it is also an historical fact that in important cases, Panama has been able to obtain expert forensic assistance from abroad.

We heard of scientific evidence about explosives residues on a towel, but not about any test for such chemical traces on any defendant's hands. Such tests are routine in an properly conducted bomb conspiracy investigation.

We heard that the alleged bomb parts had not yet been assembled into a weapon. However, in a detective's testimony that was read into the record, those parts had been clearly identified. Curiously, in light to that, we heard no bomb signature evidence.

This alleged plot to kill Fidel Castro is one of the more minor offenses for which the Cuban authorities want Luis Posada Carriles. They and Venezuelan authorities allege that in the 1970s Posada was part of a group that placed a bomb aboard a Cubana airliner when passengers embarked in Caracas. They also allege that the bomb went off over Barbadian waters in the Caribbean Sea All 73 persons aboard were killed. Cuba further alleges that from a hideout in El Salvador, Posada masterminded a series of late 1990s bombings at Cuban hotels. One of these bombings killed a young Italian tourist.

The extreme fringe of the anti-Castro movement in the United States is notorious for its long history of setting off bombs, some of them deadly. One of those, it is said, was the bomb that went off in the car of former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier, in Washington DC on September 21, 1976. Letelier and US citizen Ronnie Moffitt were killed in the blast.

Among those charged with planting that bomb was defendant Guillermo Novo.

Posada denies any part in the Cubana airliner bombing. He was twice tried in Venezuela for this and twice acquitted. But the prosecution appealed the not guilty verdicts and were thrown out each time. Posada escaped from the Venezuelan prison where he had been held and fled to Central America, where he lived under an assumed name and participated in the civil conflicts of the 1980s. Novo was convicted for the Washington bombing and sentenced to life in prison. That conviction was overturned on appeal.

Every bomber has a method of operation, a way of thinking and acting, and a choice of materials based upon availability or preference that tends to leave a "signature." Every country with a reasonably modern forensics lab and a significant history of bombing offenses is likely to have expert detectives who will be able to notice similarities and differences in a bomb's construction or in the materials gathered for a contemplated bomb. They can give an opinion about whether the device or parts are consonant with a given person's or group's bomb signature.

For example, how is the firing device made? What materials? Are different colored wires used in the construction? Are connections twisted (clockwise or counter-clockwise?) or soldered? How and with what are they insulated? What's the main explosive? What sort of blasting caps or primer explosives are used? Is there an arming switch? If so, was it a toggle switch, a knife switch, a button or something else? And so on....

Usually forensics experts gather their bomb signature evidence from tiny shards left behind at a bombing scene. (Do you think that a big explosion makes matter disappear? Think again.) Those bits of wire, plastic, explosive residue and other material can generally be identified and assembled into the traces of a bomb signature.

The British, (Scotland Yard has helped Panama in previous high-profile cases), are very good at detecting bomb signatures. The UK's detectives got plenty of practice over several decades between the bombs set off by the IRA and the Protestant militias. In the United States, the FBI has men and women who specialize in bomb signatures. The Russian, German, Israeli, French and Spanish law enforcement agencies have competent experts in this field, as do the Cubans.

The anti-Castro Cuban-Americans have left behind bomb signature records in the investigative archives of Cuba and the United States at least.

So the question jumps out to anybody who knows anything about this field of forensics --- why didn't Panamanian law enforcement try to link these alleged bomb components to known bomb signatures?

Those in attendance at the December 5 hearing also heard about a leaflet for a "Grupo Militar de Accion y Justicia," a previously unheard-of anti-Castro commando group.

Here too, methods of operation and tell-tale methods might say much, but the investigation apparently didn't get into these matters.

When Osama bin Laden's boys launch an attack, there is almost never a statement claiming responsibility. When the Basque separatist ETA attacks, they acknowledge it. The Provisional IRA owned up to its bombings, but some of the Protestant groups didn't. Some armed political organizations invent a new name for each attack they launch, and the anti-Castro Cuban-American extremists are known for this.

The Havana regime claims that the name game that its opponents play is because all of the attacks can be traced back to the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF). The CANF’s activities are in many ways subsidized by the US government, and whose rank-and-file supporters are one of the key constituencies in the electoral coalition that backed George W. Bush. The CANF has always denied any links to terrorism.

US subsidies for the anti-Castro movement made their oblique way into the courtroom on this day. Washington subsidizes Radio Marti and TV Marti, anti-Castro broadcast stations that probably attract bigger cable audiences in other Latin American capitals than in Cuba. Their signals are jammed.

These stations are purportedly federal operations that are independent of the Miami Cuban factions. The reality is that the CANF informally controls them. The Radio/TV Marti correspondent in Panama, (who borrowed a ballpoint pen from me when hers went dead), is former Panama City mayor and present radio talk show host Mayín Correa.

The Cuban government has had some pointedly nasty things to say about Mayín. For her part, she has recently complained about Cuban agents following her around. The former and possibly future alcaldesa hung out with the Miami delegation before the hearing and played reporter during the proceedings.

Writings can also be linked to persons by means other than signatures and assumed names. Comparisons of handwriting typewriting samples are well known forensic sciences. Vocabularies, usage, grammatical and spelling errors and writing styles can say a lot. In one of the most famous US trials of the 20th century, Bruno Hauptmann's habit of misspelling the word "signature" as "singature" played a major role in his conviction and execution for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby.

We heard no expert analysis of the purported political document that was allegedly found in the trial at hand however. Nor was there any comparison with other documents emanating from known anti-Castro political circles.

As we shall see, the day's proceedings ended before the reading of the file was completed. The stack of documents on the table in front of the judge suggests many lines of inquiry that didn't make it into the trial summary. Maybe questions that didn't come up in court this day WERE asked somewhere along the way. But it appears that for the most part they weren't.

The appearance is that Panamanian prosecutors and police systematically botched this investigation. So systematically was it botched that given the serious nature of the charges and the case's high political profile, it's very unlikely to have been a mistake.

Meanwhile, the tedious readings paused as the court took a recess for lunch.

As the audience filed out, Fidel's friends and foes did not argue with one another. Nor was there harassment of any sort by either party. Court officials set up a ticket system to avoid unpleasant shoving scenes at the line to get into the afternoon session, First preference was to the defendants' family members, special passes for the press and enough "visitor" tickets so that the rest of the folks who wanted to attend were able to do so.

On the way back in, the Cuban-Americans were at the front of the line and Panamanian activists held up the rear. The Panamaian activist were chanting pro-Castro slogans and sometimes vulgar abuse. The people up front didn't rise to the bait when they were called "gusanos," "vendepatrias" and "chupamedias."

Things were much more orderly as the reading proceeded back in the courtroom. The trial resumed sans a number of the lawyers. At one point, the accusing attorneys objected that missing counterparts for the defense could lead to any conviction being reversed. The temporarily unrepresented defendant moved to assume his own defense in that case. Then Ana Belfón offered to take it up, and finally his tardy lawyer showed up.

There were many whispered conversations among the defendants and between the accused and their lawyers while the secretaries droned on. Most of these centered around two men, Luis Posada Carriles and Guillermo Novo Sampol.

At 73, Posada is an old man who has been shuttling between prisons and hospitals a lot this year according published reports to be treated for cardiac and circulatory disorders. His eyes were alert but sunken into his head. At times he looked exhausted. At times he gave off the hard glower that might fit the stereotype of a vicious international terrorist. For much of the hearing, his eyes expressed fright. Possibly it was the fear of a man who suspected that this day's proceedings would determine whether he dies in custody.

At 61, Novo is the only Cuban-American defendant who isn't gray. Well dressed in a blue suit and carefully groomed, he carries himself upright like a military man. Occasionally, one would detect a hint of a smile, and occasionally an equally faint frown. But Novo's face was generally expressionless, save for a steel-hard gaze in his eyes.

Between Posada and Novo, there what appeared to be a passing of the torch between generations of anti-Castro Cuban militants, the old master and his mature successor enduring the hard test that political prisoners of every cause undergo, in each instance not for the first time. If all that has been alleged is true, then one would expect that while Fidel Castro might want more than anything to shoot Luis Posada Carriles for revenge, Cuban communism has much more to fear from the prison-hardened and still vigorous Guillermo Nobo Sampol.

Abruptly, at about 4:00 p.m., a messenger handed something to the magistrate and the trial came crashing to a halt. The higher court, the First Tribunal of Justice, Magistrate Nodier Jaramillo presiding, had granted Julio Berríos' appeal and ordered a stop to the trial some five hours into the proceedings.

"I can't continue," Magistrate Paniza declared He added that until a decision comes from above, there would be no point in setting a date for the trial to resume.

Those who believe that Posada, Novo, et al had been planning to kill them left the court unconvinced that justice had been or would be done. But at least they had the satisfaction that those whom they see as bloodthirsty terrorists wouldn't be on the streets this day.

Those who look up to Posada, Novo, et al as heroic freedom fighters left the court with anger and sadness --- some of the defendants' relatives looked to be on the verge of tears --- and protesting that justice had once more been delayed and thus denied to their loved ones.

"This is nonsense," declared defense attorney Ana Belfón. But accusing attorney Rafael Rodríguez, apologizing to all for a wasted day and yet more delay, maintained that "with all due respect, we have to proceed according to the law."