judicial

Portugal case remains open

Secretary for the Attorney General claimed that the CIDH judgment would not affect domestic investigations into the death of the political dissident.

LA PRENSA

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Panamanian courts are unlikely to give much weight to last week’s ruling by the Corte Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH), which placed the responsibility of the kidnapping and murder of political dissident Heliodoro Portugal in 1970 on the State, said Rigoberto González, secretary for the Attorney General.

González explained that judgments made by the CIDH in favor of compensating Portugal’s family would not affect the investigations within the country, which, he claimed, remain open. CIDH judges awarded the victim’s relatives $190,000 for damages, and ruled that the government must acknowledge that the State had committed human rights’ violations during the country’s military regime.

As proof that similar humans rights cases has not been abandoned, judicial sources reported last week that public prosecutors had decided to charge Manuel Antonio Noriega and two other former members of the defunct Fuerzas de Defensa, the military group that would assume control of the government in the power vacuum created by General Omar Torrijos’ death in 1981.

Despite González’ opinion of the CIDH’s ruling concerning the victim’s family, the legal secretary conceded that it represented a landmark judgment, if only symbolically. Nevertheless, he said, domestic investigations would continue independently of that court’s determinations.

González also acknowledged the Patria Portugal’s role in seeking justice in the case of her father’s assassination. Appearing before the CIDH, he said, is “the right of any Panamanian who feels that the State hasn’t responded to a crime against human rights”

Another case implicating the Panamanian government in human rights abuses against political critic Santander Tristán Donoso is pending judgment by the CIDH.

Donoso was convicted of slander and libel in 1996, after denouncing former public prosecutor Jose Antonio Sossa for eavesdropping on his private phone calls.