Bike assasins invade Panama

PANAMA. Assassinations and the way they are carried out keep puzzling police forces, who have not been able to contain the wave of executions.

There are strong suspicions that the hired assassins are Colombian.

Judges at the Public Ministry maintain the thesis that the most high profile cases that have taken place in Panama during the last few weeks are a product of vendettas between gangs of Colombian and Mexican narcotraffickers, fighting to control the passage of drugs through the country.

The method of carrying out assassinations on bikes started in the 70s in Colombia. Later, these delinquents invaded other countries such as Spain, Mexico, Peru, the United States, and Panama, where they have provoked terror among the inhabitants.

The first case was reported in Panama in 2003, when a man dressed as a clown driving a motorcycle shot a man dead on the main floor of a building in Via Brazil. Since then, these types of cases have been on the rise.

According to reports by the Judicial Investigation Directive (DIJ), in the first 35 days of 2009, at least nine executions have been recorded in the cities of Panama and Colon. Three of these were committed by assasins on motorcycles, but the nationalities of the hired killers is not known.

The most recent case took place at 7:30 p.m. last Monday, when two men riding a red motorcycle opened fired on 38-year-old Colombian Oscar Dino Divado Cardoze, in front of the entrance of the Bayside Building in Malecon street in Costa del Este.

Some eye witnesses said that Divado was hit when he was trying to get into his car, a Toyota Yaris.

The attackers had been waiting for their victim for half an hour. After the attack, Divado had bullet wounds all over his body. He received three bullets on his elbow, one in the armpit, forearm, and one on his left side.

Among the many products that Colombia exports are the assassinsfor hire. According to an article published by the Semana magazine, they operate in more than 10 countries. Some of the best known “jobs” outside Colombia have been the assassination of the chief of the norte del Valle cartel, Wilber Varela, in Merida Venezuela. In 2005, COlombian assassins also traveled to Mexico to kill Jaime Pineda, also known as “Pispis”, a member of Diego Montoya’s mafia.

Although many of the murders are among mafia groups to set accounts straight, the efficacy and the low cost of the Colombian assassins-for -hire makes them highly sought after by criminal groups in different countries.

In Panama, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Mexico, the assassins are also hired for local vendettas and have installed permanent ‘offices’. < Similar operations exist in Chile, Paraguay and Argentina.