Panamanian authorities reported the arrest in Venezuela of the alleged perpetrator of a 1994 attack that brought down a plane in Panama with about twenty people on board, most of them Jewish, and said they will seek his extradition.
Interpol Panama “received confirmation” from its counterpart in Caracas “of the apprehension of citizen Ali Zaki Hage Jalil,” a Venezuelan national suspected of downing an Alas Chiricanas aircraft on July 19, 1994, the Panamanian police said Saturday in a statement.
The aircraft exploded shortly after taking off from Colón International Airport in northern Panama, with 21 people on board, including 13 Jewish businessmen. It is the worst attack in the country’s history.
“The apprehension of the wanted individual took place” on November 6 “on Margarita Island,” in Venezuela’s state of Nueva Espara, the police detailed. “Coordination is under way… in order to initiate extradition proceedings,” they added.
Panama’s foreign ministry said Saturday it had begun “diplomatic and judicial procedures” to “ensure that the detainee faces Panamanian justice.”
It also expressed “concern” over the “presence and residence in total impunity of an individual in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela linked to the terrorist attack committed against Flight 901 on June 19, 1994.” In 1995, the United States offered a two-million-dollar reward for information about the air attack.
Washington included the crash of the Panamanian plane in a terrorism report and linked it to a possible action by a suicide commando from the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah.
“It fills me with hope to know that our loved ones have not been forgotten,” said Karina Smith, whose grandfather died in the crash. For years, Panamanian authorities put forward two theories about the incident: a drug-trafficking score-settling or an anti-Semitic attack.
The case gained momentum in 2018 when then Panamanian president Juan Carlos Varela asked to reopen the investigations after receiving new information during an official visit to Israel.
According to Varela, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told him that his country’s intelligence service determined the plane’s downing was a “terrorist attack” allegedly carried out by Hezbollah. Shortly afterward, the Superior Discharge Prosecutor’s Office reopened the case “to investigate a suspected case of terrorism.”
