Panama Update Archives
| November 1999 Back to Panama Update Bones on Former Military Base Provoke New Question Acting on the testimony of an anonymous witness, Panamanian government workers dug up the bones of two people on a former Panamanian military base in Tocumen on September 22. The witness declared that one of the bodies was that of Father Hector Gallego, a Colombian priest disappeared by Panamanian security forces in 1971 in Veraguas province. He said he saw an ambulance bring the body into the base and men burying it the night of his disappearance. Although DNA tests conducted on the bones and on blood from two of Gallego's sisters came out negative, the discovery led to the formation of a new committee of family members of the disappeared in Panama, known as COFADEPA. Gallego's family has declared that they will pay for a second set of DNA tests. COFADEPA, which says that more than 100 Panamanians were killed and 30 disappeared by the Panamanian armed forces, wrote to President Moscoso on November 18, calling for four actions. First, the group urged the establishment of a DNA lab in Panama that could carry out such forensic work. They also asked that the investigation into the grave at Tocumen and other locations be continued so that their relatives might be found. Third, "the Public Prosecutor should immediately locate the files on all those disappeared and murdered by the Torrijos-Noriega dictatorship, review those cases and ask the courts to re-open them." Finally, the committee urged creation of a law that would eliminate all immunity for human rights crimes of any kind. "Father Héctor Gallego led a process for organizing social reform in Veraguas province to benefit the impoverished peasants of the region," declared the National Movement in Defense of Sovereignty (MONADESO). "That social reform provoked the energetic opposition of land owners there, politically tied for several reasons with high military officers, in particular with General Omar Torrijos. Responsibility for the kidnapping and disappearance of Father Gallego on that June 9, 1971, as the testimony of Bishop Vásquez Pinto has shown, falls on the then military chief General Torrijos, who ran the country at that time." Nivaldo Madriñán and Melbourne Walker, both military officers, were convicted of Gallego's disappearance in 1992 and received 15-year prison sentences. Panama's military was abolished during the U.S. invasion in 1990. Jesuit priest Nestor Jaén said that the new discoveries merit the creation of a national Truth Commission, such as those that investigated human rights crimes in El Salvador and South Africa. MONADESO, for its part, called for investigations into not only the disappearances and murders committed by the Panamanian miltiary, but during the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. Sources: La Prensa 11/1, 11/22/99; The Panama News 10/99; COFADEPA statement 11/18/99; MONADESO statement 10/21/99.
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