Panama Probes Alleged Murder of Migrants
Military apparently threw them out of planes "for entertainment"
PANAMA CITY (laht.com) -- Prosecutors are investigating the suspected homicide of a score of undocumented migrants killed and thrown in the sea during the 1980s military regime, the Panamanian Attorney General's Office said Monday.
A spokesperson told Efe that the probe being led by senior prosecutor Dimas Guevara includes the inspection of classified files of the National Police, at that time a part of the armed forces.
Authorities are searching for documents related to events described by former army personnel that they say occurred in Darien province bordering Colombia and that point to then-Capt. Luis "Papo" Cordoba as the officer in charge of the 1982-1983 executions.
The Panama City daily La Prensa published on June 22 the statements of five ex-soldiers who described how the flights were made and said that the victims were killed purely for entertainment.
The AG's office added that it has also summoned to make statements some of those behind the press release denouncing the "death flights."
La Prensa's story relied on testimony from Juan Calzada, Julio Ortiz, Florentino Paredes, Benito Gonzalez and Crisol Uriarte. All five identified themselves as subordinates of Cordoba, then-military chief of Darien and close to Manuel Antonio Noriega, who became Panama's de facto ruler in 1983.
Cordoba, who spent several years in jail for killing a peasant after the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 to stop Noriega's involvement in drug trafficking and money laundering, is now an evangelical Protestant preacher. EFE
