Panama Seizes Anti-Noriega Unit’s Files

PANAMA CITY —  Government agents raided the Panamanian Chamber of Commerce building Tuesday and confiscated four boxes of files from the headquarters of a movement to oust the country’s military strongman, Gen. Manuel A. Noriega.

The officials from the attorney general’s office were accompanied by armed security agents, who detained about 40 students and employees in the building for nearly three hours while they searched desks and file cabinets.

The agents also ripped out part of the ceiling in the reception area of the National Civic Crusade office, housed in the Chamber of Commerce building, during their search for printed material. They had an order, signed by a federal prosecutor, authorizing them to search for materials that threatened state security. The Chamber of Commerce is the lead organization in the Civic Crusade, the movement of 100 professional and business groups challenging Noriega.

Secretaries locked in the building while the search was going on managed to alert journalists and lawyers for the Civic Crusade. Hundreds of protesters gathered in a torrential rain outside the building, chanting “justice, justice, justice” and waving white handkerchiefs, the symbol of the upper-class movement.

The front doors of the chamber were locked and guarded by plainclothes police in sunglasses. Two reporters who sneaked in the back door of the building during the search were evicted by the security agents.

“The search order comes from the military garrisons, because they rule here,” said Genarino Rosas, an attorney for the movement. “It is as illegal as the closure of the (opposition) newspapers.”

The government closed three opposition newspapers last week and arrested a colonel who has publicly charged Noriega with corruption and the killing of a political rival. Col. Roberto Diaz Herrera’s charges touched off the political unrest two months ago. Two radio stations have been closed, and television stations are censored.

Demonstrators’ Testimony

Although the government is headed by civilian President Eric A. Delvalle, power rests with Noriega, head of the country’s defense forces and the only general in the military.

Rafael Zuniga, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, said the officials conducting the search took copies of statements from people who said they had lost their jobs because of their work with the movement and testimony from anti-military demonstrators arrested last month.

He said they also took pamphlets, press clippings, lists of foreign journalists, lists of the members of the business organizations in the Civic Crusade and minutes of the group’s meetings.

Federal prosecutor Mario Ballesteros, who led the search, said: “I did my duty in investigating a well-known fact, that this group that calls itself the Civic Crusade is issuing and distributing flyers that are a threat to national security. We found those flyers and we took them.”

He said the search was conducted peaceably.

“This is an effort to intimidate us,” Zuniga said after officials left the building. “It is an effort to intimidate people so they won’t go to our demonstration, but people will go.”

The crusade has called a demonstration for Thursday, the first large-scale opposition demonstration called since July 10, when riot police broke up a rally and arrested more than 300 protesters.

The 20 students meeting at the chamber belong to a new coalition of university students formed this week to resist military rule. Oneida Patino, 20, said the security agents searched the students’ bags and notebooks, took anti-government leaflets and photographed the students who were at the chamber gathering information.

“I was incredibly scared,” Patino said. “We didn’t expect to be detained.”