In a long, rambling and highly selective manifesto sent to the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) and selected Panamanian news media, Attorney General José Antonio Sossa has accused Fundacion Libertad president and former La Prensa publisher I. Roberto Eisenmann Jr. of orchestrating a “systematic and incisive” smear campaign against himself and the Public Ministry. Calling himself a “firm supporter of freedom of expression,” Sossa --- who is currently pressing criminal defamation charges against Eisenmann because the latter noted that the attorney general has “protected delinquents” while prosecuting journalists --- alleged a long campaign of harassment against himself by La Prensa.
In fact Sossa, both as a complainant in his own right and by putting the resources of the Public Ministry behind others, has seen to it that more than one-third of all Panamanian journalists are facing or have faced criminal defamation charges, many of them brought by public officials or former public officials. In fact Sossa has made a public declaration accusing a substantial portion of the Panamanian press of being a “criminal element.” In fact Sossa has blocked virtually all investigations of major cases of political corruption during his tenure. In fact Sossa has steadfastly refused to act on complaints by victims of foreign operations such as The Harris Organization and the Millennium Fund using Panama as a base for international swindling operations. In fact Sossa deputized foreign bounty hunters hired by one Marc Harris --- now awaiting sentencing on money laundering and other charges in a Miami federal lockup --- to make arrests in Panama. Although there will doubtless be legal wrangling about what gets into any court file, Sossa’s actions are unambiguous and a part of the public record.
Sossa alleges that early on in the alleged harassment campaign, La Prensa published a forged alleged check to his unsuccessful 1994 legislative re-election campaign by Colombian drug kingpin José Castrillón Henao. Former La Prensa journalist Gustavo Gorriti and others have been prosecuted for criminal defamation for that article. However, what Sossa neglected to tell the IAPA is that La Prensa reporters confronted Sossa with the purported document and that he refused to comment on whether or not it was authentic and instead threatened prosecution, or the context of that forgery, coming several days after it was revealed that former President Pérez Balladares had received a large campaign contribution from Castrillón Henao. (The origin of that forgery remains obscure, but the circumstances surrounding the affair suggest that it may have been planted on behalf of Sossa himself as a means to end the inquiry into the relationship between Castrillón Henao and Pérez Balladares.)
Sossa goes on to blame Eisenmann for a number of supposed abuses by La Prensa which took place after Eisenmann stepped down as publisher in 1995. He accuses Eisenmann of attempting to exercise political power through his newspaper.
Eisenmann responded to Sossa, mainly in La Prensa, pointing to several instances in which Sossa refused foreign requests for money laundering investigations against Marc Harris. That matter is controversial among lawyers and bankers, because some of the requests were clearly about the laundering of the proceeds of tax evasion, investigation or prosecution of which is forbidden by Panamanian banking secrecy laws. However, other foreign requests were not about tax evasion. Marc Harris’s ultimate criminal conviction in the United States did include counts of tax evasion, but it was primarily based upon the laundering of proceeds from violations of US environmental laws. Sossa prosecuted a number of La Prensa journalists for criminal defamation because they reported his orders to subordinates not to aid help overseas law enforcement agencies investigate Harris. These charges were ultimately dismissed on the ground that the stories were true.
The Harris affair also played a role in Sossa’s firings of Jorge Motley (the former head of Panama’s INTERPOL office) and Alejandro Moncada (the former head of the Judicial Technical Police, or PTJ), both of whom went public about the attorney general’s edict against investigating Marc Harris. Also leading up to Moncada’s firing was a televised, guns-drawn confrontation between Sossa’s and Moncada’s bodyguards, which took place when the son of a friend of Sossa’s had been arrested on drug charges and the attorney general went down to PTJ headquarters to order the young man’s release, which Moncada resisted. The Supreme Court ultimately decided on a split vote that although the head of the PTJ is hired by the court and the head of the INTERPOL office is hired by the PTJ chief, the attorney general has the power to fire these officials.
In his counter-attack Eisenmann also raised the issue of Sossa’s steadfast opposition to investigations or prosecutions for the murders and disappearances of political activists during Panama’s 22-year dictatorship. Sossa’s legal reasoning for this has been first that investigations are barred by the statute of limitations and second that in some cases the dictatorship’s prosecutors or courts “exonerated” those responsible for the abuses. The Supreme Court recently ruled against Sossa on this, upholding the long-standing legal principle that there is no statute of limitations in murder cases.
Eisenmann said in La Prensa that the battle with Sossa is part of something larger in Panamanian public life, that “we are living through a great institutional crisis.”
The war of words and legal documents continues. La Prensa, based on declarations by Sossa’s lawyer in the attorney general’s personal criminal defamation prosecution against attorney and human rights activist Santander Tristán Donoso, is now alleging that Sossa has a specific blacklist of critics. Emilio Royo Linares, who is representing Sossa in an appeal of the acquittal on criminal defamation charges that Sossa brought against Tristán Donoso, listed in a document filed as part of that appeal, in addition to the accused, lawyers César Guardia, Sidney Sittón and Alexis Sinclair, former PTJ chief Moncada and former INTERPOL chief Motley, former national Ombudsman Ítalo Antinori, law professor and radio show host Miguel Antonio Bernal, former judge Jorge Luis Lao, journalists Gustavo Gorriti, Carmen Boyd Marciaq and Rolando Rodríguez and Bobby Eisenmann as “public enemies of the attorney general.”
Sossa’s 10-year term ends at the beginning of next January and both of the candidates with a chance of winning the presidency, Martín Torrijos and Guillermo Endara, say that they won’t keep him on.
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Panama News Briefs
Mireya and friends won't get PARLACEN immunity
Sossa presses his attack on the Panamanian press
On the Campaign Trail
