|
|
|
|
|
News
| Economy
| Culture
| Opinion
| Lifestyle
| Nature |
Volume 14,
Number 20 |
Also in
this section: Daniel
Delgado Diamante gets 30-day leave to confront murder investigation
1970
slaying haunts Minister
of Government & Justice by Eric Jackson Back then, the Guardia Nacional was a "law" unto itself. On February 8, 1970, then Lieutenant Daniel Delgado Diamante, whose dad was one of the first politicians who embraced the military dictatorship that was installed on October 11, 1968, went to the Panama Viejo home of Corporal Andrés García and shot him three times at close range with a pistol. García died and, although there was some sort of military inquiry, it did not hurt Delgado's career. The lieutenant rose to be, at the time of the 1989 US invasion, a lieutenant colonel, commander of the Panama Defense Forces San Miguelito garrison and a member of General Manuel Antonio Noriega's general staff. After the invasion he spent some time in jail, went to law school and, in the Martín Torrijos administration, was named Minister of Government and Justice. Under his leadership and the president's controversial decrees, Panama's law enforcement agencies have remilitarized and reorganized in such a way that there is now no independent detective agency to investigate if a member of one of those forces is accused of murder or any other crime. (It used to be that when a member of the National Police was suspected of a crime, the independent Judicial Technical Police would investigate, but now the latter institution has been broken up and made a part of the National Police.) After a series of investigative reports by La Prensa, it came to light that Delgado had personally slain García. The latter's wife, who was an eyewitness, said that the corporal was unarmed when Delgado shot him, purportedly for refusing to carry out an order. Delgado has produced what purports to be an old Guardia Nacional incident report, wherein Delgado claimed that a .22 pistol without ammunition was found in the house where he killed García and that the latter had at some point menaced somebody with a bayonet. Delgado claims that he was investigated and submitted to a judicial process and cleared of wrongdoing. However, he has produced no documentary evidence of and no witness to any such legal proceeding and the slain corporal's family says that they never knew of any such thing. The initial search of court and prosecution records also comes up with no evidence of any legal proceeding. However, many judicial and prosecutorial records only go back as far as 1991, with older documents haphazardly stored in the National Archives. If it was a military court martial or lesser disciplinary procedure, the archives of the Panama Defense Forces were seized by the invading US forces and have been kept in the United States as war booty and as a prevention against political revelations that could embarrass Washington. Attorney General Ana Matilde Gómez has opened a preliminary investigation, but says that in light of the claim that Delgado was already submitted to a judicial process and cleared, the National Archives must be searched and found to lack any documentation of a prior judicial case before his prosecutors could open a formal criminal investigation. The US Embassy did not answer a question by The Panama News about whether the Public Ministry had asked for a check of the Panama Defense Forces archives in US possession for documents in this case. Delgado is threatening legal action against La Prensa, although he has yet to identify any substantial part of their reports that is untrue. Nevertheless, things look so bad that on October 22, two days after Gómez opened the preliminary inquiry, Delgado asked for and received a 30-day leave without pay to confront the charges. President Torrijos has had nothing to say about the matter. Replacing Delgado, at least temporarily, is Vice Minister of Government and Justice Severino Mejía. Like Delgado, Mejía was a military officer during the dictatorship. When the Panama Defense Forces was abolished by the 1989 US invasion, he held the rank of major and was the adjutant for one General Manuel Antonio Noriega.
Also in
this section: News
|
Economy | Culture
| Opinion
| Lifestyle
| Nature
Make
the Executive Hotel your headquarters in Panama City --- http://ww.executivehotel-panama.com
|
||||||||||
|
©
2008 by Eric Jackson email: editor@thepanamanews.com or e_l_jackson_malo@yahoo.com Mailing
address: |
|
|
||||||||
