Panama begins exhumation of victims of the 1989 invasion by the U.S.

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – A homicide prosecutor’s office began exhumation procedures in the Monte Esperanza cemetery in Colon, Panama, in the first reopening of graves in that cemetery, in search of unidentified skeletal remains of victims of the U.S. invasion, which occurred 31 years ago.

The exhumation in the cemetery is part of a commission effort, sought by relatives seeking to identify victims and find those who disappeared during the U.S. intervention.

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Monte Esperanza is the second cemetery where work is being carried out to exhume the remains of people who died during the invasion to submit them to DNA tests and match them with relatives.

The work directed by the Superior Prosecutor’s Office began in the Colon Cemetery. It removed several bodies buried on top of the remains they were trying to identify. It is a specific case where relatives of a victim informed the authorities that the remains were located at a certain point of the cemetery of Colon.

Once the land is removed, anthropologists, archaeologists, and forensic experts will begin to do their work; they will take the respective measures and then start the exhumations, said the prosecutor of homicide and femicide discharge Maribel Caballero. “A much slower work that is going to take a little bit longer,” she explained.

Relatives have come a long way with the longing to know the truth about the invasion victims that ended the government of Manuel Antonio Noriega (1983-1989).

A glimmer of hope was lit in early 2020 when judicial authorities reopened cases and began the first exhumations in the capital’s Jardín de Paz cemetery. Still, the coronavirus pandemic, confinement, and delays in delivering funds to operate have delayed the work.

Even so, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has already extracted 33 human remains for forensic anthropological analysis.