Attorney General José Antonio Sossa, currently engaged in pathetic and pointless political campaigning to expand the powers of his office, is complaining that national Corrections Director Concepción Corro should lose her job because a prisoner doing time for robbery here and suspected of a double murder in the United States was allowed out on a work release program.

Corro answers not to the Public Ministry and Sossa, but to the Ministry of Government and Justice and Arnulfo Escalona. Sossa, a former Christian Democrat legislator who was appointed to his present post by former PRD President Ernesto Pérez Balladares, is not going to get the power to hire or fire corrections directors, either directly or indirectly. Neither will his raililng against the Judicial Technical Police (PTJ) get him the power to appoint its chief, which is vested with the Arnulfista-dominated Supreme Court.

There is a good argument that the inmate whose work release offended Sossa shouldn't get out onto the streets. Whatever the truth of the charges in the United States, the guy's a violent offender from whom the public should be protected.

But of course, because the man is a Panamanian citizen, our constitution prevents his extradition to face American justice.

Sossa has repeatedly used that constitutional provision as a bogus excuse to protect international criminals. He has used it to block foreign requests for money laundering investigations, even though the conduct suspected by US and European authorities would also have been violations of Panamanian law. The FBI wants the former Panamanian consul in New York, whose son is married to former President Pérez Balladares's daughter, for international trafficking in stolen Peruvian antiquities. The FBI says it has proof that the disgraced former consul, Francisco Iglesias, smuggled a priceless artifact in the Panamanian diplomatic pouch in exchange for a $100,000 bribe and used the consulate in New York as a gallery to show it to potential buyers. Iglesias fled to Panama and cannot be constitutionally extradited to the United States, so Sossa has used that as an excuse to take a dive on enforcing Panamanian laws against such illegal use of our nation's diplomatic pouches and consulates.

Ah, but is this different, because it involves murder? Sossa is flagrantly and sneeringly protecting his political buddies who tortured and murdered with impunity during the time of the dictatorship, thumbing his nose at the Truth Commission and the most elementary concepts of justice.

Yes, Panama should look at its prison work release program, but no, we should not give undue deference to anything that Sossa says.

People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions. Conclusions are not always pleasant.

Helen Keller

Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth.

Muhammad Ali

In university they don't tell you that the greater part of the law is learning to tolerate fools.

Doris Lessing

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