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Also in this section:
ACP disavows its consultants' studies, nixes independent environmental review
PRD group keeps Endara from speaking
On the referendum campaign trail
Panama News Briefs

Panama News Briefs

Talk show hostess charged with “injuria”

Attorney and vehicular homicide suspect Carlos Jones has charged journalist Lucy Molinar with “injuria” --- the publication of a true story injurious to his reputation --- for a television interview she did with the children of a couple who died in a crash in which Jones was involved. Jones has been charged in the case, which has involved such oddities as the inability to locate the woman who was in his car at the time of the accident, the disappearance of Jones’s wrecked car and the suspension of Jones’s wife, a prosecutor, for allegedly trying to manipulate the court case. Molinar could get a year in prison, and the president’s penal law revision commission has recommended that penalties should be doubled for true stories that offend the high and mighty.

Traffic points system coming

The Land Transportation and Transport Authority (ATTT) has announced that beginning next year it will institute a point system for driving infractions, with various points assigned for each citation based on the severity of the offense and a driver losing his or her license for accumulating too many points. The new traffic regulations will also include mandatory impoundment of cars driven by drunks or used in street races.

Prosecutor shot and wounded, five held

On September 15 prosecutor Armando Silvestre Gittens was shot by two masked men in an ambush outside a Public Ministry office in Colon and seriously wounded. Later five members of the Curundu street gang “Los Sagrados” were arrested and a number of other individuals are sought in what is believed to have been an attempted contract killing. As these briefs were done there had been no announcement identifying a suspect who would have hired the gang. The nation’s prosecutors have been given increased police protection in the wake of this assassination attempt and the poisoning death of the head of the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) special investigations unit, Inspector Franklin Brewster.

Brewster poison identified, FBI grilling colleagues

The US Navy’s laboratory has reportedly identified the poison that killed PTJ Inspector Franklin Brewster and it turns out to be a substance not sold in Panama. Meanwhile it is reported in some of the Spanish-language dailies that the FBI, which has been brought into the investigation at Panama’s request, has been interrogating people who worked with Brewster, including while hooked up to a polygraph machine. Brewster headed the PTJ’s sensitive investigations unit and some fairly sophisticated organized crime gangs would have good reasons to want him dead. He fell ill shortly after having eaten his lunch at the PTJ office where he worked and died several days later. Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez had criticized the PTJ for failing to have collected samples of the material that doctors pumped from Brewster’s stomach and the FBI was initially unable to identify the toxin. However, tissue samples were sent to the US Navy’s lab for identification.

US says RP doesn’t help fight drugs

Panama was one of 20 countries on a White House list of nations that don’t lend sufficient help in the fight against drugs, and the expected denials and expressions of outrage are underway. Government and Justice Minister Olga Golcher said that since the mainstream media are frequently taken along on drug busts, that’s proof that Panama fights against drugs. (Notwithstanding, of course, that an international drug ring had bought 10 kilometers of beachfront in Colon province and several islands in Panama and the investigation has not gone much farther than the people and businesses identified by US authorities.) Also named by the United States --- by far the world’s principal drug-consuming country --- were the Bahamas, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nigeria, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela, India, Pakistan, Myanmar and Afghanistan. The latter country, of course, is occupied by a US-led international military force.

Venezuela says RP doesn’t help assassination probe

Venezuela’s top prosecutor, Isaías Rodríguez, says that Panama has been dragging its feet on Caracas’s requests for cooperation in the investigation of the 2004 car bomb slaying of environmental prosecutor Danilo Anderson. Venezuelan authorities sent letters rogatory to Panama to have prosecutors here question individuals in the case, but have received no response. The Venezuelan prosecutors face a court-imposed deadline to wrap up the investigation and have asked for an extension because they say that Panama and Colombia have failed to question people with information that might have evidence about the person or persons who ordered the gangland-style hit. So far newspaper editor Patricia Poleo, a fugitive sometimes holds press conferences in Miami, has been charged with organizing the assassination along with several other right-wing opposition figures.

Prizefighter charged in shooting

Boxer Vicente “El Loco” Mosquera is behind bars awaiting trial for a September 4 shooting death that took place at a beachfront bar in the Puerto Caimito area of La Chorrera. He says he didn’t do it and a juvenile has confessed, but other witnesses say that the former WBA super-featherweight champion was the gunman who killed a local fisherman. Also held in the incident is boxer José "Maco" Arboleda.

Politician’s son, two ex-cops busted in robbery ring

The son of an alternate PRD legislator was one of two former police officers arrested on September 19 when a carload of armed men was captured waiting to rob foreigners coming from Tocumen Airport to shop in the Colon Free Zone. Nicomedes Castillo, had been fired for participating in a robbery of Colombians from the police force last year and who most unusually was released on bail while awaiting trial for that crime, is the son of legislator Leandro Ávila’s suplente, Marta de Castillo. Arrested with him when the car full of suspected armed robbers was surprised by police on Via Tocumen in Juan Diaz was former police officer Alberto Salgada Ariza, who was free on bail for an extortion charge and Salgado Ariza’s brother José Luis Salgado Ariza and cousin Marlon Salgado Mariscal. Police say that they had an accomplice working at the airport who would tip them off about people entering the country with large amounts of cash --- an obvious method of operation in the string of tourist robberies that the government has long denied was possible. However, this alleged accomplice was not arrested. Also eluding arrest were alleged accomplices supposedly driving two other that police say were to have been used in the foiled robbery attempt.

Free Zone buyers robbed

On September 17 a taxi carrying businessmen en route from Tocumen Airport to the Colon Free Zone was forced off the Trans-Isthmian Highway near the Cemento Panama plant and its occupants were robbed of cash and valuables worth some $40,000 by Uzi-wielding robbers. Most likely the robbers were tipped off by somebody working in Customs at the Tocumen Airport, who found out about the money the businessmen were carrying because of the declarations that must be made when arriving in the country.

Teacher slain while trying to stop phone cable theft

Two suspects are under arrest in the murder of fourth grade teacher Isaac Álvarez, who was gunned down on September 18 near the Arraijan - La Chorrera Autopista while trying to stop four men from stealing the cables that provide telephone service to his Santa Elena neighborhood of La Chorrera. Álvarez, who was 49 years old and is survived by a wife and four children, was part of a neighborhood watch patrol. Legislators are calling for draconian new penalties for the theft of utility cables, but successive governments have yet to see fit to ever investigate or arrest any of the traffickers in stolen utility cables, sewer caps and grates and other items of urban infrastructure that are bought from petty thieves and exported to Asia for their scrap metal.

Via Veneto roundup

The shooting of an American tourist by a teenage street gang was apparently the final staw on Panama City’s main tourist drag, Via Veneto, which has largely been taken over by pimps, hookers and panhandlers. On September 14 police and immigration officials swept down the sidewalks and into the Internet cafes, brothels and massage parlors, taking away at least 20 undocumented foreigners, most of them Colombian but also including Peruvians, Ecuadorans and Haitians. The tourism police are also paying more attention to youths hanging around the area in a bid to spread the word that the street is gang-unfriendly.

Paitilla shootout

A September 13 carjacking that began in Juan Diaz ended up in a shootout on Avenida Balboa between the Multicentro shopping mall and the papal nunciatura. Nobody was killed or wounded, and the gunmen got away.

Not nearly as bad as Washington DC

The Panama News frequently receives emails from abroad, asking if Panama is relatively safe or relatively dangerous in terms of violent crime rates. Consider that we are a country of some three million people, and that for the first half of 2006 the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) report that we had 141 homicides. In the US capital, a city of some 550,000 residents, there were 82 homicides in the same period. Also in the first half of this year, the PTJ statistics register 1,414 armed robberies and some 12,738 crimes of all varieties. Panama’s crime rate, of course, is not spread evenly throughout the national territory.

US Embassy issues warning

The American Embassy has issued a crime warning after a home invasion robbery in Albrook. It includes the following advice: “The US Embassy reminds American Citizens in Panama to exercise good personal security. Lock all doors, windows, gates, and automobile doors at your residence. Periodically check your alarm system. Ensure that domestic help and children know not to allow anyone into the residence without prior consent from an adult member of the household. Have important numbers, such as the local police and fire departments, readily available or memorized.”

Payback?

Supreme Court presiding magistrate Graciela Dixon was sufficiently furious when prosecutors searched the high court’s record files for evidence in a case of a judge with a fake law degree that she started an investigation about the legality of the search. Now it seems that the shoe is on the other foot, maybe not by coindicence. On September 4 magistrate Adán Arnulfo Arjona, investigators from the high court and a plaintiff’s lawyer descended upon the Public Ministry to search records relating to the firing of prosecutor Jovani Olmos. Mr. Olmos is appealing his ouster in court.

MOLIRENA gets its subsidy back

The conservative MOLIRENA party has had its public subsidy restored. Under its former leadership it was run as an extension of the Rosas family business but was given great leeway when the party was a member of the ruling coalition headed by former President Mireya Moscoso. After Moscoso’s departure the Electoral Tribunal cut off payments to the party because former leader Jesús “Maco” Rosas could not coherently account for how previous government subsidies had been used. But the Rosas family was thrown out in a leadership struggle, the new party president Gisela Chung has put the organization’s records in a more orderly fashion and the tribunal thus resumed the subsidy payments and recently issued a check for more than $95,000.

Fewer party members

It might not be like the classic Greta Garbo line. In the 1940s anti-communist parody “Ninotchka,” Garbo’s character was asked by Soviet trade representatives how things were going back in Moscow, and she said that things were well: “The latest show trials were a great success --- we have fewer but better party members.” In Panama we have fewer party members, but better is debatable. It seems that people have been leaving the ranks of most of the political parties. According to August figures released by the Tribunal Electoral, the Panameñista, MOLIRENA and Liberal Nacional parties have all been losing members, which is normal for members of a governing coalition that was voted out of office in disgrace. But the PRD and Partido Popular form the government now, and they are also seeing small net losses in membership, which is unusual. The parties that are growing are Ricardo Martinelli’s Cambio Democratico and Guillermo Endara’s Vanguardia Moral. Altogether there are 2,036 fewer members of the various political parties, with the biggest losses accruing to the Panameñistas (804) and the biggest gains coming to Vanguardia Moral (436). Slightly less than half of all eligible Panamanian voters belong to a political party.

Electoral prosecutor sides with Alba

Electoral Prosecutor Gerardo Solís is urging the Electoral Tribunal to ignore the constitutional provision that lets political parties strip legislators of the elected positions. The case arises with respect to Kuna Yala deputy Rogelio Alba, formerly of the National Liberal Party, who got caught smuggling liquor and cigarettes out of the Colon Free Zone and is allegedly implicated in a number of other criminal or shady situations. A number of legislators have engaged in flagrant criminal activity since 1994, when the last case of a deputy being thrown out was recorded, but nowadays there is an unwritten agreement that legislators are above the law and as a practical matter may not be thrown out of office, prosecuted or even investigated. That may begin to change when the five-member hardcore pro-corruption bloc loses one of its seats on the Supreme Court at the end of this year, but the legislature and Electoral Tribunal and Torrijos administration will all remain bastions of political corruption with impunity.

Maytín quits anti-corruption panel

Already facing stern criticism for refusing to address the massive public funding of the “yes” campaign and open favoritism for one side exhibited by the Electoral Tribunal because she has taken a job with the vote counting organization, Transparency International Panama chapter president Angélica Maytín has resigned from anti-corruption czarina Alma Montenegro’s advisory council, citing too little support for anti-corruption efforts. She retains her post as head of the local chapter of Transparency International, but despite the resignation is likely to only be taken as a credible anti-corruption spokeswoman by the PRD-aligned media in the future

Museum robbery case reopened

The case of the February 2003 theft from the old Reina Torres de Arauz Anthropology Museum gold room has been reopened. On the prosecutor’s appeal the court decision dismissing the cases against seven of the 13 charged has been revoked and the six defendants who were convicted will be resentenced. It’s not clear if the investigation of the inside job at the museum will be reopened to look at other possible suspects, as the Moscoso administration and former Attorney General Sossa very carefully limited how high into the National Institute of Culture (INAC) the probe was allowed to go. Most but not all of the stolen pieces were recovered as the accidental byproduct of an investigation of a credit card cloning ring. One big problem obstructing the recovery of the missing pieces is that no photos of those items were available to circulate through INTERPOL.