Boz has a good take on former Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli’s current plight based off Tim Johnson’s piece for McClatchy.
The most surprising part of this story is not the corruption (most people guessed something wasn’t right about the Martinelli government), but the speed and effectiveness that the government of President Varela has acted. Martinelli worked hard at the end of his administration to construct a political shield that he assumed would allow him to avoid charges for several years. His political cover has unraveled far more quickly for Martinelli than for most other former Central American leaders who have faced similar corruption charges.
Martinelli holds Panamanian and Italian citizenship and is friends with former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi so, in a sense, it shouldn’t be surprising that he sought sanctuary in Italy. I imagine that it is quite difficult to be extradited from Italy to Panama, if it ever comes to that, given that he holds Italian citizenship.
However, Martinelli is also a potential target in Italy.
1) The trials involving international corruption in Italy against Valter Lavítola and executives from Finmeccanica and its derivative firms which involve alleged backhanders to Martinelli, as yet to be demonstrated, as well as other crimes.
He disparagingly refers to this as ‘an Italian soap opera.’
Martinelli has not been mentioned in connection with the affair by Lavítola in Italy, the main accused party, but he has been cited by witnesses from the country such as Mauro Velocci – representative in Panama for Italian firm Svemark contracted to build modular prison units which were approved by the minister for security, Raúl Mulino – who did give details in the Italian courts of payments of alleged backhanders.
Go read Luis Manuel Arce’s article on Scandalous corruption during R. Martinelli’s time in power, from which the paragraphs above come, for what appears to be strong coverage of Martinelli’s troubles.
I also found it funny all the shady characters that Tim identifies who sought sanctuary in Panama.
Freewheeling Panama has been a favored destination for despots on the run, including the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who arrived in Panama in late 1979, fending off status as an international pariah. He spent several months on Isla Contadora before leaving for Egypt, where he died.
Among deposed regional leaders who now claim political asylum in Panama are former Guatemalan President Jorge Serrano, who arrived after being removed in 1993, former Haitian strongman Raoul Cedras, who came in 1994, and Abdalá Bucaram, a former Ecuadorean leader declared mentally unfit by that country’s Congress in 1997.
Fugitive Salvadoran President Francisco Flores spent several months in Panama last year before returning to face charges that he’d misappropriated $15 million donated by Taiwan’s government.
I thought he meant Panama City, as in Panama City, Florida. There are these Nicaraguans from the National Guard, these former Salvadoran generals, and a few Nazi war criminals.
Want some more?
Gerardo Machado, Cuba
Terrifying nickname: The Tropical Mussolini
Iron-fisted infamy: Four decades before El Comandante stormed Havana, Gerardo Machado brought dictatorship to Cuba like a gift-wrapped turd. Elected the island’s fifth president in 1925, he exiled student dissidents and might have ordered soldiers to kill opposition leader Julio Antonio Mella. He even created La Porra (the Truncheon) — a bowel-loosening secret police force that tossed enemies into gulag-esque underground prisons.
Gilberto Jordán, Guatemala
Terrifying nickname: Kaibiles Killer
Iron-fisted infamy: In 1982, as a 26-year-old soldier in Guatemala’s national army, Gilberto Jordán enlisted in an elite paramilitary team known as the Kaibiles. The red-beret-wearing soldiers were notorious for recklessly slaughtering any indigenous people unlucky enough to get in their way. On December 7, 1982, Jordán’s unit of 20 soldiers surrounded the unfortunate town of Dos Erres. Jordán grabbed the first baby he saw and threw it down a well before his unit interrogated every man in the village, raped most of the women, and then murdered 251 townspeople — many by smashing their foreheads with a hammer and then throwing them down a well. “[He] sounds like a mass murderer,” a federal judge said during his trial earlier this year. Jordán didn’t argue.
Prosper Avril, Haiti
Terrifying nickname: The Intelligent Prosper Avril (frighteningly bestowed by François “Papa Doc” Duvalier)
Iron-fisted infamy: Prosper Avril rose to power through Haiti’s military after joining the presidential guard of murderous dictator François Duvalier in 1969. He served as a trusted adviser to both Papa Doc and his son, Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, before staging a coup d’état in September 1988 and installing himself as a Duvalier-style dictator. He ruled with brutal force in Port-au-Prince for two years, throwing the opposition into jail and publicly beating and shaming them. Avril’s thugs beat Evans Paul, the democratically elected mayor of Port-au-Prince, and then paraded the bleeding and bruised politician on national television. Amnesty International says Avril’s brief presidency was “marred by gross human rights violations.” He squirreled away hundreds of thousands of dollars embezzled from international aid and Haitian government coffers.
Telmo Ricardo Hurtado, Peru
Terrifying nickname: Butcher of the Andes
Iron-fisted infamy: Peru. 1985. The manchaytimpu, a time of conflict. The government was locked in a death battle with Maoist rebels from the Shining Path, and armed paramilitary squads hunted the Andes for weapons caches and guerrillas. On August 14, Telmo Ricardo Hurtado — a thin, tan, 24-year-old second lieutenant with side-parted black hair — led 30 Peruvian soldiers into a village in Quebrada de Huancayo, a dusty green valley 14 hours from Lima. Hurtado filed the 70 or so villagers into a field while his troops ransacked their homes. Then he shepherded them into two houses, where his troops fired machine guns, threw grenades, and set the homes ablaze. Seventy-four people died.
Juan Angel Hernández Lara, Honduras
Terrifying nickname: Bandit of Battalion 3-16
Iron-fisted infamy: In the ’80s, the CIA hired a crack team of assassins to carry out its nefarious plans against leftist guerrillas and politicians throughout Central America. Among the deadliest was a group of Honduran special forces with the ominously boring name of Battalion 3-16. Juan Angel Hernández Lara joined the battalion as a young army recruit and quickly became an officer. He later admitted his duties included shoving metal pins under suspects’ fingernails, firing bullets into people’s hands to force them to talk, and using plastic bags to smother government enemies.
Carlos Sánchez Berzaín, Bolivia
Terrifying nickname: Bolivia’s Dick Cheney
Iron-fisted infamy: As Bolivia’s defense minister in 2003, Carlos Sánchez Berzaín presided over a government crackdown against mostly indigenous protesters who had blocked roads leading to La Paz. They were picketing plans to sell the country’s natural gas reserves to foreign investors. On September 20, 2003, according to filings in an ongoing civil lawsuit, Berzaín flew on a military helicopter to a picturesque, backpacker-friendly hamlet called Sorata to negotiate the release of some tourists. The negotiations quickly went sour. In the lawsuit, victims claim the defense minister ordered troops to fire on the locals. That fight exploded into a month of widespread violence, now nicknamed Black October, that eventually led to 67 protesters dead under a hail of bullets from Berzaín’s army. Berzaín said the deaths were collateral damage in a battle to save his country. Most Bolivians disagreed. They ran him and President Gonzalo “Goni” Sánchez de Lozada out of La Paz and into Miami exile by the end of the month.
So who
