Retired Panamanian colonel Roberto Díaz Herrera has asked the Public Ministry to investigate the 1981 death of General Omar Torrijos.
He maintains that a CIA assassination plot was behind the plane crash that killed the the general, an operation called “Falcon in Flight”. In 1983, the inquiry into the accident concluded that the plane “had no mechanical failure, no residues of explosives were detected, fuel contamination was discarded and the possibility of explosion or fire in flight as well. But the major cause of this accident was controlled flight into terrain by pilot error due to poor visibility and spatial disorientation.”
Torrijos, who governed Panama from 1968 to 1981, is best known for negotiating the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties that eventually gave Panama full sovereignty over the Panama Canal on December 31, 1999.
Diaz Herrera believes that the Public Ministry has a legal obligation to reopen the investigation and run further tests on the fuselage to determine if a bomb was remotely activated before the crash, La Prensa reports.
Omar Torrijos
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