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News
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Volume
16, Number 6 |
newsAlso in
the news section: Aftermath
of prison reformer Javier Justiniani's murder
Apparent
gunman
arrested, but confusion ensues
by Eric Jackson, from other media Back in 1999, Javier Justiniani
and Braulio Enrique Saintein lived in the same
prison cell, and later as a lawyer Justiniani unsuccessfully defended
Santein's father, who has a similar name. Allegedly caught on a video
surveillance camera and identified by the secretary who witnessed
Justiniani's April 29 slaying, Santein was arrested the day after the murder
while at his job as a baggage handler at Tocumen Airport.
Before Santein was identified and apprehended, the Martinelli administration in general and Government & Justice Minister José Raúl Mulino had been taking the position that Justiniani's death was the product of his criminal past. It was a continuation of the vilification of Justiniani during his lifetime as at the very least an accomplice of criminals by reason of the ex-convict and attorney's campaign for less hellish prison conditions. In Panama there are hardly any restrictions on pretrial publicity stunts by police and prosecutors, and thus the government, mainly through prosecutor Neftalí Jaén, has been continually announcing details of the investigation, the supposed results of Saintein's interrogation and claims of breakthroughs in the case. At first, prosecutors reported, Santein said that he shot Justiniani because he believed that the lawyer had done a poor job of representing his father, whom he thought should have beaten the charge against him. But that would be something that happens from time to time to criminal defense lawyers everywhere in the world --- the lawyer who doesn't win the case is presumed to have lost due to malpractice and revenge is taken or attempted. The prosecutors said that they didn't believe the initial story. Then it was announced that Santein changed his story, then claiming that some Colombians had pressured him to kill Justiniani, whom he considered a friend, and threatened to have his father killed in prison if he did not carry out the hit. That second version was said to fit in with the secretary's version, and that of a woman across the street and of the surveillance camera, that placed a short, heavy set woman with light skin and dark hair at the scene of the crime as it was unfolding. After the shooting, it was said, she walked away while Santein got into a taxi and was driven off. Prosecutors claimed that they had identified the cab's number by way of the police surveillance camera. On May 3 the police arrested taxi driver José Luis "Peluquín" González. But González, who said that he's giving his full cooperation to investigators, claims that he was neither driving the cab nor in Juan Diaz at the time of the crime, and that he never transported Santein. It seems that this may have been a taxi whose operation was shared, but in any case prosecutors do not appear to believe his story. There ensued a series of at least three arrests of Colombian women, none of whom very closely matched the description or used the name provided for the suspect seen around the crime scene. In at least one of these cases, the woman who was arrested was handed over to Migracion for allegedly having overstayed a visa. The embarrassed prosecutors then announced that the pursuit of the alleged Colombian woman had been handed over to immigration authorities, and a dragnet was put out to harass Colombian prostitutes in particular and Colombian women in general. The question has been raised whether the Colombian woman angle is a political invention designed to smear Justiniani as a gangland figure until the day that he died and thus vindicate the claims put forward by the Martinelli administration. Meanwhile Justiniani's family has become a party to the case, by way of a lawyer working as private prosecutor. The late activist's mother said that she has forgiven her son's killer or killers, but wants to know the truth and wants to see that the prison reform work that her son did continues. UPDATE as of May 20: But for witnesses not particularly tied to the government, The Panama News would hesitate to characterize Santein as an "apparent" gunman and as to any declarations about the investigation coming from the Martinelli administration we treat those as allegations. One reason for this is the arrest of a man whom prosecutors said had been identified by Santein as the source of the gun he allegedly used (which, by the way, has not been found). But the man was released a few days later, supposedly because Santein's story was false. This, in turn, raises questions about what methods police and prosecutors may be using to get information out of Santein and ultimately the credibility of the entire investigation. There was clearly long-standing bad blood between Justiniani and Martinelli, as shown by this Spanish-language video made by Justiniani in late 2008. For those who read Spanish, that animosity also shows through in this letter from Justiniani to Martinelli, written less than three weeks before Justiniani's death. Justiniani's family has hired attorney Holanda Polo as their private prosecutor in the case, and she has alluded to certain unspecified incongruities in the investigation file. It is now claimed, in another case that has taken on a life of its own, that shortly before his death Justiniani gave Cambio Democratic legislator Marco González photos of one Eduardo “Rumba” Alfaro, a colorful and controversial figure and aide to Minister of Government and Justice José Raúl Mulino taking several high-profile drug gangsters --- the leaders of the local Baghdad and Matar o Morir gangs respectively and an alleged operative from Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel --- out of penitentiaries where they were being held. One of the hoodlums shown with Alfaro, Matar o Morir leader Moisés "Zanahoria" Palacios Castillo, was murdered outside a discotheque in Plaza Edison on April 26, while another, Baghdad leader Jorge Rubén "Cholo Chorrillo" Camargo Clarke, was seriously wounded in a spectacular April 20 shootout on the Cinta Costera. González claims that his son, who was fired as warden of La Joya Pentitentiary for objecting to the mobsters being taken out of the prison without a court order. Remarkably, the first televised defense of Alfaro's actions were on Telemetro, by an attorney named Ricardo Bilonick, who appeared in some of the photos and was an attorney for one of the Sinaloa Cartel gangsters. Bilonick was an interesting figure in the news back in 1991. A diplomat during the dictatorship, he pleaded guilty in a US court to smuggling tons of cocaine into the United States but avoided the long prison term that one generally gets for that sort of offense by turning state's evidence and testifying as a prosecution witness at the Miami trial of one General Manuel Antonio Noriega. Bilonick said that the mobsters were authorized to leave the prison. Mulino later backed up Bilonick's story, saying that the gangsters were let out of the prison as part of a "sensitive investigation." But apparently not so sensitive that the government protected them from hit men, or its alleged investigation from Bilonick. Moreover, this version of events raises another question: Since criminal investigations are the bailiwick of the Public Ministry, why was the Minister of Government and Justice involved in this?
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2010 by Eric Jackson email: editor@thepanamanews.com or e_l_jackson_malo@yahoo.com Mailing
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