Equipo de Torrijos reprime bomba en la víspera de la elección

ID DOC: 16126

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FECHA: 0000-00-00 00:00:00

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FUENTE: Embassy Panama

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PRIVACIDAD: CONFIDENTIAL

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REFERENCIA: This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

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C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 PANAMA 000896



SIPDIS





DEPT. FOR WHA/CEN/BRIGHAM





E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/19/2014

TAGS: PGOV, PINR, PM, POLITICS & FOREIGN POLICY

SUBJECT: PANAMA: TORRIJOS TEAM STIFLES ELECTION EVE

"BOMBSHELL" -- SO FAR





REF: A. PANAMA 0791

B. PANAMA 0802





Classified By: Ambassador Linda E. Watt for reasons 1.4 (b) & (d)





Summary

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1. (C) Arnulfista and Solidarity Party opponents of

presidential candidate Martin Torrijos have given documents

to reporters that they hope will link him to a 1985

drug-related kidnapping. Apparently rattled by a potentially

damaging story that could break just before the May 2

election, the Torrijos team has used Democratic Revolutionary

Party (PRD) influence with the local media to prevent it from

being published. Containing allegations of unproved

veracity, the documents (available on a website) tell a

tangled tale that attempts to connect Torrijos with sordid

individuals from the worst days of Manuel Noriega's

dictatorship. The documents strongly suggest that Torrijos

had questionable friends but they go further, purporting that

he associated with and aided known criminals. The evidence

against Torrijos is circumstantial, probably less than enough

to convict him in a court of law, but more than enough, his

opponents hope, to convince voters not to elect him. This

story reads like a Panamanian soap opera and it is difficult

to determine whether there is any real substance to this

convoluted tale. A search of DEA and other Embassy files has

turned up no evidence of Martin,s complicity in any crime.

The PRD,s apparent power to control Panama,s weak-willed

media -- at least to this point -- is a troubling portent,

should Torrijos win the election. End Summary.





Was Martin Involved?

--------------------

2. (C) On April 7, 2004, according to Embassy sources,

Martin Torrijos, his lawyers, and his Chilean consultants

scrambled to study allegations about Martin,s alleged

complicity in a 1985 drug-related kidnapping that later were

posted on a website (www.ornstein.org), the day after the

documents on the website were distributed to reporters.

Public records show that the then 22-year-old Torrijos signed

a sworn statement acknowledging that he lent his car to an

acquaintance, Raul Mata Zuniga, who was involved in the

kidnapping. In his July 1985 statement to a judge, Torrijos

swore that he was not aware of the kidnapping plan. The

kidnappers apparently did not use Torrijos' car to abduct the

victims. The recent PRD strategy session was called after

the kidnapping victim, Judy Hidalgo de Watson, apparently

told the Torrijos campaign that Solidarity Party legislative

candidate Abraham Martinez had offered her $50,000 to speak

publicly about the case. Ms. Watson declined the offer,

evidently to protect her children from a politically

motivated media frenzy.





A Big Cocaine Heist Gone Wrong

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3. (SBU) The complicated story, which reads like the script

to Scarface, goes something like this. In May 1985

Noriega,s drug pilots Floyd Carlton Caceres and Teofilo

Watson apparently stole more than half a ton (538 kg or 1184

lbs) of cocaine from the Medellin drug cartel. According to

documents on the website, which Embassy has partially

corroborated from September 1986 DEA reporting (86 DEA HQS

WASHDC 029870), four Colombians came to Panama City to look

for Carlton and Watson but, unable to find them, kidnapped

Watson,s wife, her daughter, and two brothers, both minors,

on June 30, 1985.





4. (SBU) According to Panamanian investigation records, a

Panamanian accomplice, Raul Mata Zuniga, brought the

kidnappers and their victims in several cars to a farm

outside Colon owned by Eric Abrego. Torrijos was at the

farm, where he was a weekend guest, according to his

statement to police. When Mata's car got stuck in mud near

the farm, Mata walked to the farm, with gun in hand, to ask

for help. Torrijos agreed to let him borrow his Nissan

Patrol. When Mata failed to return, Abrego and Torrijos went

looking for him in Abrego's Jeep, whereupon they came upon

Torrijos' Nissan, which was also stuck. They also met Mata,

the Colombians, Ms. Watson and her children, and several

vehicles, including a BMW and a Mercedes. After getting a

tractor to pull the cars out, everyone wound up back at the

farm with Torrijos and Abrego. After some time, Torrijos and

Abrego left but Mata and the other kidnappers stayed. After

Torrijos and Abrego left, according to the documents, the

kidnappers interrogated Ms. Watson about the whereabouts of

her husband, and at one point staged a mock execution of Ms.

Watson,s daughter.





5. (SBU) Mata Zuniga and another witness alleged in their

1985 sworn statements that Martin Torrijos later attempted

several times to intervene with Panamanian authorities on

behalf of the same group of Colombians when they were

arrested in Chiriqui Province in western Panama on

immigration charges. Allegedly, Torrijos called Romulo Abad,

a good friend of Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF) Major Luis

"Papo" Cordoba, and PDF Colonel Roberto Diaz Herrera, a

cousin of Omar Torrijos, Martin's dictator father. Neither

Cordoba nor Diaz Herrera would agree to release the

Colombians. There is no evidence to corroborate Mata,s

allegations, but they could hurt Torrijos if aired publicly

on the eve of elections.





The Darkest Years of Noriega

----------------------------

6. (SBU) Diaz Herrera, Cordoba, and Abad are bad apples who

evoke images of the darkest years of the Noriega regime for

those who lived through them, the last people the Torrijos

team wants voters to associate with Martin while trying to

convince Panamanians that Martin represents a "new PRD."

(See Reftel B.) Diaz Herrera was fingered as the number two

in Noriega's drug-running operation and also a accomplice in

the 1985 torture and murder of dissident Hugo Spadafora.

Luis Cordoba was a close Noriega associate that U.S.

authorities arrested in January 1990 for his participation in

the Spadafora murder and sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Among other things, Romulo Abad is a known alien smuggler.

The Department revoked Abad's nonimmigrant visa along with

that of former President Ernesto Perez Balladares in 2000.





PRD Blocks Dissemination, Alleges Smear Campaign

--------------------------------------------- ---

7. (C) A PRD source told POL Specialist April 7 that former

PRD Foreign Minister Ricardo Alberto Arias had pushed TVN

(Channel 2) board member Stanley Motta to discourage

journalist Lucy Molinar from reporting the case on her

morning program, as she was planning to do. Motta warned her

(falsely as it turned out) that she might create "legal

problems" for herself and the station if she went ahead.

Molinar, reportedly upset at what she saw as censorship,

evidently bought the legal argument. Torrijos supporter and

salsa star Ruben Blades used the April 7 11 p.m. news on

Channel 13 (Telemetro - owned by the PRD Gonzalez-Revilla

family) to warn of an impending "dirty tricks campaign"

against Torrijos as the election approaches. The Torrijos

team is apparently resigned that the story probably will get

out despite their intense efforts to spike it. The

Arnulfistas, our sources say, at one point were trying to

have the story published abroad to be later "copied" in local

press.





Emergency Pow-Wow on Strategy

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8. (C) During the emergency April 7 meeting at Martin's home

(with his legal team, plus Hector Aleman and Hugo Torrijos),

according to Embassy sources, the lawyers found no

exercisable legal recourse against someone who publishes

factual reports of the case. The file in question is a

matter of public record in Panama's National Archives. When

consulted, Torrijos' Chilean image consultants supposedly

told him that if the case surfaces in the local press, Martin

should stick to his 1985 statement to police that he was

unaware of the ongoing kidnapping. Hugo and Hector

reportedly agreed to dig for dirt on Aleman and his

associates that they can hold in reserve in case things get

nasty.





COMMENT: News behind the News

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9. (C) Most of the allegations linking Martin Torrijos and

the kidnappers in the 1985 case are not substantiated. On

June 30, 1985, Torrijos admitted he lent his car to Mata, one

of the kidnappers. There is no proof that he was aware of or

involved in any criminal activity. What is not clear is why

Torrijos was at Abrego's house when Mata arrived, gun in

hand, as the documents state, with the kidnapping party close

behind. The question of Martin's guilt or innocence probably

would not be as important in the court of Panama public

opinion as his association with known criminals.





10. (C) Torrijos opponents, noting Martin's substantial lead

in the polls, are desperate to sully Martin's personal

reputation, but no one has been able to make any accusation

of wrongdoing stick on Martin. Anti-Martin attacks tend to

resonate most with voters who already are anti-PRD, who

cannot believe Martin really has neutralized the PRD old

guard, who were frequently involved in shenanigans like this

during the Noriega years. Arnulfista candidate Jose Miguel

Aleman has been Martin's most aggressive assailant, although

the Endara camp no doubt would like to discredit Torrijos,

given Endara's consistent message that the PRD has not

changed and will never change. (See Reftel A.)





11. (C) The apparently craven attitude of Panama's press in

choosing, so far, not to publish the documents is

disappointing, but whether it amounts to "omerta" (the

Sicilian Mafia's code of silence), as the website claims,

probably is an exaggeration. If Torrijos were President of

Panama, Panama's media would likely be much more aggressive

toward him. For example, despite La Prensa's pro-Martin bias

during the 1999 and 2004 campaigns, it has criticized

Arnulfista and PRD administrations alike, inspiring the

indignation of Panama's current and previous Presidents for

its investigative reporting. Once Martin is "on the inside,"

public scrutiny of everything he does will increase.





12. (C) While Torrijos public relations team has shown its

power to control the media, Embassy believes that the other

three presidential campaigns have similar resources and

influence to wield in a comparable situation. Controlling

the media probably does not come cheap. For instance,

Stanley Motta, whose powerful family controls COPA airlines,

a large bank, and an import-export firm, as well as several

Panamanian insurance companies, may simply see his

involvement as good politics in dealing with the likely next

president (Torrijos). Motta probably believes that building

goodwill with the probable next President is a prudent

business move.





WATT