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La Prensa reports a joint Panamanian and US investigation of five Muslims with ties to Islamic extremist goups from the Indian subcontinent, who are believed to have entered Panama with the intention of later sneaking into the United States. The possible existence of an Al Qaeda cell in Panama has been the subject of speculation for years. A 1994 commuter plane bombing, in which a semtex charge went off in the hands of a mysterious Mr. Jafar, downing a flight taken by mostly Jewish Colon Free Zone merchants, remains unsolved and bears some of the hallmarks that were later found to be typical of Al Qaeda attacks. Since the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, security has been stepped up to ward off a possible attack on the Panama Canal by Osama bin Laden’s followers.

Attorney General José Antonio Sossa, who opposes the existence and work of the Truth Commission that has been investigating human rights abuses during the 22-year military dictatorship, has charged the commission’s director Alberto Almanza and American dog handler Sandra Anderson with fraud, alleging that human remains found by the dog were actually planted by Anderson. The complaint comes from Edwin Wald, like Sossa a long-time Christian Democrat and political ally of the party that was founded by the dictatorship, and also the brother of one of the disappeared. Wald has tried to convince other relatives of the disappeared to drop their search for information about what happened and press for monetary compensation instead. The fraud charge is based upon allegations that Anderson planted human remains for her dog Eagle to uncover. She is facing similar charges in a US federal court, but denies that she planted evidence here or there.

Christian Democrat activists Edwin Wald and José Antonio Sossa, who have impugned the investigative work done by the controversial dog handler Sandra Anderson and her cadaver-sniffing dog Eagle for the Truth Commission --- and by the way oppose the work of the Truth Commission in general, as it tends to cast the military founders of their faction’s ally, the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) in a bad light --- appear to have flunked an important independent test of their claims. A team of three Florida police dogs and their handlers has confirmed the presence of human remains at the site of the old Puma infantry barracks motor pool in Tocumen, as Eagle had indicated. Sossa and Wald have never quite explained how Anderson planted the human bones under the soil and blacktop at te site, or for that matter how she found the remains of activist Heliodoro Portugal to plant there. The Florida police dogs also indicated that human remains were interred on the grounds of the former dectatorship’s riot police baracks in David. The dogs also indicated that people were buried at another site explored by Eagle, the Enrique Malek Airport in David, and in the woods at Los Cabritos, a few miles outside of David. A witness says that three anti-dictatorship activists were executed at the latter site in 1969, and in 2001 Eagle indicated human remains there about 30 meters from where the Florida dogs pointed.

According to reports in El Panama America, the suspected ringleader of a fraud scheme within the National Lottery has confessed and implicated a number of other people, ranging from vendors to department heads. It seems that the group skimmed about $18,000 from each lottery drawing and stole at least $1.5 million.

A 30-something-year-old woman has been arrested after allegedly trying to pass a $6,800 check using a falsified cedula, but the case is generating more attention than a garden-variety bad check scheme because the cedula she used appears to have been made from a genuine blank of the new 3M flag logo ID card form. The previous cedulas, made by the US-based UNISYS corporation, had to be withdrawn from circulation at great expense to Panama after it was discovered that people within that company had diverted a supply of the blank forms to the Colombian underworld. Now there is concern that this woman may have either obtained the form for her fake ID from inside sources, or that there are now some relatively genuine-looking counterfeits being made. The Electoral Tribunal’s first impression was that the cedula form was forged rather than stolen. At the time that the UNISYS scandal broke some observers wondered if it might have been part of a plan for massive voter fraud in next year’s elections. Now the Electoral Tribunal and the National Police are faced with a major investigation to discover the provenance of the ID the woman was carrying, with public confidence in the electoral process one of the issues at stake.

The Electoral Tribunal has cancelled 345 voter registrations in the Portobelo district, most of them on Isla Grande. It seems that someone was planning a ballot box stuffing by padding the electoral rolls in the district with people who don’t live there. However, nobody has been charged with organizing the massive false registration. Portobelo is part of Colon’s legislative circuit 3-2, in which the 1994 legislative election had to be re-run precisely because the initial results were obtained by stuffing the ballot boxes with the votes of non-residents.

The president of the Legislative Assembly, Jacobo Salas, was taken to the Paitilla Medical Center for observation after suffering multiple injuries in a September 17 collision between his car and a bus on Calle 50. It seems that none of his injuries were life-threatening. Unlike previous assembly presidents, Salas drove his own car and didn’t use the services of government chauffers or bodyguards.

He’s got that style, so it seems. Dissident PRD legislator Carlos Afú, whose defection gave Mireya Moscoso control over the legislature, headed the Agriculture Committee last session but will be in charge of the Style Committee this year. The Ameglio brothers, Marco and Francisco, abstained during the September 1 vote for the assembly presidency and as a result of their indiscipline have been stripped by their Arnulfista colleagues of the committee leaderships that they had previously held.

Elías Castillo Domínguez, the former PRD mayor of La Chorrera, has been told by an appeals court that he must serve a five-year prison sentence for having sexual relations with a girl who was 12 years old at the time. The case has been pending before the courts since 1997, when the girl’s mother complained to police. Castillo, 63, may appeal to the Supreme Court.

Xiomara Hubbard, better known professionally as Madame Thonya, is appealing her three-year prison sentence for running a prostitution ring offering the services of girls under the age of 18. Her lawyer claims that Thonya’s convictions for pandering and corruption of minors ought to run concurrently, not consecutively, and thus the sentence imposed is longer than what the law provides.

One of the allegations in the Social Security dispute is that the Moscoso administration intends to use the system’s funds for election year public spending for which Mireya’s anointed successor José Miguel Alemán will take credit. Deposed Seguro director Juan Jované had already complained a few days before his ouster that this was being done, citing Alemán’s participation at the ribbon-cutting inauguration ceremony for a Social Security project in the Colon community of San Juan this past May. Although Jované has lost his standing to file charges on behalf of the fund, anti-corruption activist Enrique Montenegro has filed charges with the Electoral Prosecutor, alleging that Alemán in effect made illegal use of public funds for campaign purposes.

Legislator Haydée Milanés de Lay, who is calling for the removal of Darien’s indigenous residents who live outside the comarcas, has quit the Solidaridad party and joine the Arnulfistas. At a ceremony attended by President Moscoso and her hand-picked presidential candidate José Miguel Alemán, Milanés de Lay signed the register as an Arnulfista and then danced with Alemán to Colombian Vallenato music.

Dissident PRD legislator Manuel De La Hoz, who represents Panama City’s circuit 8-9, says that he’s switching to the Arnulfista Party and will seek a third term in the Legislative Assembly on that party’s ticket. He is the second PRD deputy to seek an Arnulfista nomination, the first being Los Santos legislator Carlos Afú. The decision about whether they will actually be nominated is effectively in the hands of party boss Mireya Moscoso.

The Partido Popular’s complaint against Chiriqui Governor Miguel Angel Fanovich arising from an illegal permit to hunt in a national park has been dismissed by the Superior Tribunal in David. Last May a group of Spanish businessmen was apprehended by officers of the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) while hunting in Parque Amistad, and they produced a document signed by Fanovich purporting to give them permission to hunt in the park. Fanovich said that the document was altered, but declined to file a complaint for the forgery he alleged. Fanovich, who wants to be elected to the legislature next year, says he’ll file criminal defamation charges against his accusers.

For many years, security along the Independence Day and Flag Day parade routes has been handled by the National Police. Apparently they were not tough enough in rooting out the animalistic terrorist majorettes who persisted in defying Education Minister Doris Rosas de Mata by performing banned baton tosses and pirouettes. For this year’s festivisties the Institutional Protection Services (SPI, the presidential guards) have been given the job of securing the parade routes.

They were apparently trying to go under the radar, but went too far under. On September 8 a small plane that took off from Colombia without filing a flight plane and crossed into Panamanian airspace tried to duck behind Volcan Baru en route to Costa Rica. Unfortunately for those aboard, it slammed into Cerro Cuchara. Two charred cadavers and the residue of a drug shipment were found in the wreckage.


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