news

Also in this section:
The drug lord's alleged political fronts
Heckadon defends environmental aspects of canal expansion
Prosecutors raid the PTJ
The difficult process of getting a new party on the ballot
On the referendum campaign trail
Panama doesn't want Posada Carriles back
Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

FBI can't identify poison from Brewster's body

The investigation into the poisoning death of PTJ Inspector Franklin Brewster has been stymied by the FBI crime lab's inability to identify the substance involved. The blood and tissue samples taken from Brewster's body have been sent to the US Navy's lab, which is not only equipped to assist in criminal investigations but also to identify chemical and biological weapons as part of the US national defense, for further study. In a related development, Attorney General Ana Matilde Gomez has criticized the PTJ detectives handling the case for not preserving samples from the material taken when Brewster's stomach was pumped as part of the ultimately unsuccessful medical efforts to save his life.

Aminta Corro suspended

Colon's anti-drug prosecutor, Aminta Corro, has been suspended from her job and put under criminal investigation for alleged ties to drug traffickers. The complaint about Corro began with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), which alleged not only that she had underworld ties but that she is suspected of having filtered information about investigations to drug traffickers. She denies any wrongdoing and called the DEA's accusations an "infamous calumny."

Panameñistas' funding restored

All political parties with ballot status get public subsidies based on the number of votes they received in the previous election, but there are rules on how the money may be spent and how it must be accounted for. Under Mireya Moscoso's rule the Panameñistas, then known as the Arnulfistas, were essentially a petty cash box for a few families and after the change of government the Electoral Tribunal imposed fines and penalties on the party and suspended the payment of subsidies. The leadership and money handling practices changed, and enough money was withheld to pay the fines and penalties and then some, but the election authorities delayed in authorizing the resumption of subsidies. Now, however, the flow of public money is back on and the party received a check for $65,000.

Women's group criticizes political parties

According to a 1997 reform to the Electoral Code, at least 30 percent of each political party's convention delegates and the same proportion of its slate of candidates must be female. However, the Foro Nacional de Mujeres de  Partidos Politicos, a group composed of women from all of this country's political parties, has complained to the Electoral Tribunal that in the recent contest for control of the Panameñista Party and in the merger of the Solidaridad and Liberal Nacional parties the convention delegate requirement has been ignored. The group complains that this is but one more example of "asymmetries and exclusions" that adversely affect women in this country.

Elías Castillo to get another year

The PRD legislative caucus, which holds an absolute majority in the National Assembly, has decided to re-elect Elías Castillo to another term as the legislature's president. There is no law against re-election to that post but it would break with a tradition that has held since the 1989 US invasion ended the former dictatorship.

Arnoldo Alemán arrest order

It may be a difficult order to enforce, given entrenched corruption in Nicaragua and that country's extradition laws, but a Panamanian judge has ordered the arrest of former Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Alemán, his wife, his father-in-law and former tax director Byron Jerez, for laundering nearly $60 million in money stolen from the Nicaraguan government in this country. Authorities here have frozen more than 70 accounts in at least a dozen banks in this case, but most of these had been cleaned out by the time that prosecutors filed their papers. Also seized were a house in Costa del Este and three houses in Clayton, with a combined assessed value of nearly $600,000.

Viteri jailed for money laundering

Politically connected drug gangster David Viteri, who has regular used the services of the PRD-aligned MEDCOM television stations to broadcast his threats against rival hoodlums, may have lost a debate with prosecutors. The mainstream media paid attention to Viteri's claim that to steal drug caches from rival gangs isn't really a crime, which in turn led an assistant prosecutor to consider charges under an obscure law about advocating crime but elicited a response from the attorney general that she wasn't about to debate law with Viteri. What she did instead was, on the bases of the fleet of cars that Viteri owns, uses or otherwise controls, the visible means of income that the people in whose names these are registered and Viteri's own apparent legal income, have the man thrown in jail for money laundering.

ACP employee shot when mistaken for gangster's mother

The vicious gang war between El Chorrillo's El Pentagono and the drug organization led by David Viteri became got even worse with a drive-by shooting in the normally quiet townsite in Los Rios. Wounded twice by thugs on a motorcycle was an Panama Canal Authority employee, who was mistaken for Viteri's mother, who lives a couple of blocks away from the shooting scene.

That soft drink sales exec?

On August 11 the PTJ picked on one Luis Fabián Astudillo Lemos, a Colombian citizen, in a Paitilla raid. The 38-year-old had been on INTERPOL's wanted list for some time, due to US drug charges. Nevertheless he had managed to obtain a Panamanian cedula and open several bank accounts here, and lived in Paitilla posing as a soft drink sales executive. He faces extradition to the United States. It is not clear whether there will be any investigation or other consequences for the acts of public corruption that allowed him to fraudulently obtain Panamanian citizenship.

Bail for pedophile politician

Jaime Marín Maure, the suplente to the representante for the Panama City corregimiento of Chilibre, is now out of jail on $3,000 bond. He was caught with a minor at a pushbutton and generally one does not get out of jail in such circumstances, but the PRD politician got an appeals judge to cancel the trial court's preventive detention order. Prosecutors say they'll appeal the bail decision. El Panama America's coverage of the matter was curious in that it featured an opinion by a psychologist who minimized the offense as a common feature of the mid-life crises of men in their 40s and 50s.

Arrest in Altos de Golf home invasion robbery

Police have arrested a man whom they say was one of at least four members of a gang responsible for a particularly brutal late June home invasion robbery in the upscale Altos de Golf neighborhood. The victims were an American family and the case has received quite a bit of notoriety in the community. The suspect was caught trying to sell several of the stolen items on the street in Casco Viejo, which were identified both by the victims and by the number still in the stolen cell phone.

Masked robbers invade IPAT deputy director's home

Carl Frederick Nordstrom, the number two man to Tourism Minister Rubén Blades was assaulted and robbed of valuables worth some $70,000 by two masked men who invaded his home, La Estrella reported. There has been a rash of that sort of thing lately.

Toddler killed in teenage gang shootout

A three-year-old boy was killed and two 15-year-old suspects were released to their parents after an August 11 shootout between two teenage gangs fighting over turf in the slums of Curundu. The parents of Bryan Elisha Links, the toddler who was killed in the crossfire, made a tearful call for peace in their neighborhood, which has been terrorized by the fighting between Los Niños Sicarios and Los Desgras, both armed gangs composed of boys between the ages of 15 and 17. The slain child's relatives were not happy with a juvenile judge's decision to release the two gang members, and the incident revived predictable calls by politicians for tougher laws against juvenile offenders.

Paramilitaries on our border disarm

A group of some 500 right-wing Colombian paramilitaries who had been operating in their country's Choco province adjacent to our Darien province have lain down their arms. On August 15 the AUC members from the group's Elmer Cardenas Bloc turned themselves in at the town of Unguia and accepted a partial amnesty that the Bogota government had offered. Members of this unit had also invaded Panama and killed and kidnapped people here, but prosecutors in this country have never filed charges in those cases.

Colamarco's birthday party investigated

Minister of Public Works Benjamín Colamarco and some of the people who work under him face an investigation by anti-corruption prosecutor Maribel Cornejo. The latter showed up at an August 17 surprise birthday party that top officials in the government and in MOP gave for Colamarco at Rancho Maria, a facility owned by the ministry. The questions are whether the sort of functions for which Rancho Maria was designed are inherently illegal uses of public facilities for private purposes and where to draw lines about proper and improper uses of public funds. It's unlikely that Colamarco will be penalized, but some new rules may come out of the affair. The minister denies any wrongdoing.

Oil spill in Curundu River

On August 10 a slick of thick black oil was noticed on the Curundu River and the National Environmental Authority (ANAM) sent in inspectors. It seems that an employee at the Arnulfo Arias Hospital Complex didn't turn a valve far enough and thus emptied the Seguro Social facility's supply of heating oil into a storm drain, which led to the river. The hospital uses the oil for its boilers that provide steam for sterilizers and power for emergency generators. ANAM found that it was an act of negligence rather than a deliberate act.

Heavy rains cause urban problems

On August 18 residents in about 20 houses in Santiago, Veraguas had to be evacuated when rainwater got into sanitary sewers and caused them to back up into the Villa Serena neighborhood. Across the country rains have caused flooding in some low-lying areas, sewer and storm drain backups in higher areas where the pipes are clogged with trash,  and migrations of rodents, land crabs and other unwanted visitors into human habitations in search of new shelters after their own nests and burrows have been flooded out. Residents need to be aware that torrential rains can quickly create conditions even on the streets of the capital in which pedestrians can be swept away by rushing rainwaters into the drainage system, and parents need to take special care that their children do not play near ditches or storm drains because it's a common cause of drowning deaths.