Questions linger over air disaster

ANNIVERSARY: STILL NO SOLUTION 26 YEARS ON

22 die when plane explodes shortly after takeoff in Colon, Panama.

Panama City

Abigail Benzadon remembers perfectly the day 26 years ago when her husband Moshe Pardo left home to catch a flight to Panama City.

He hadn’t planned on flying but he had a medical appointment and decided to go anyway, she recalled.

He and 21 others – most of them Jewish – never made it to their destination.

Alas, Chiricanas Airlines Flight 00901 exploded shortly after takeoff on 19 July, 1994 from Colon, Panama, in what Israel and the United States believe was an act of terrorism.

Relatives of the victims are still awaiting resolution of the case.

“Twenty-six years after the attack, I have absolutely no expectations from the justice system,” Benzadon said.

“On the part of the Panamanian authorities, there is no hope that something will happen.”

Alberto Levy, a member of the Living Conscience Committee, a group created in memory of the victims, said: “Just like any other crime, we believe it should be investigated to the end, so that the attack does not go unpunished.”

The Panamanian authorities have pursued two theories: that it could be a case of score-settling by drug traffickers, or that it was an anti-Semitic attack.

In 1995, the United States offered $2 million for information related to the case, saying the attack might have been the work of a Lebanese Hezbollah suicide squad.

“Everything indicates it was a terrorist attack and there still are many questions and loose ends,” said Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik.

In Panama, investigations have centred on a passenger named Ali Hawa Jamal, who is believed to have detonated a bomb concealed in a radio.

Jamal was the only person aboard whose body was never claimed.

The FBI suspects Jamal belonged to the same Shiite Hezbollah group that, one day earlier, had detonated a carbomb that killed 85 people and injured hundreds of people at the headquarters of a Jewish charity in Buenos Aires.

“It was a criminal act without precedent in Panama,” said Juan Antonio Tejada, who was a senior prosecutor there at the time.

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It was a criminal act without precedent in Panama