Panama City
Panama’s outgoing president, Mireya Moscoso, dumped a diplomatic crisis in her successor’s lap this week when she pardoned four Cuban exiles accused of plotting to kill Fidel Castro. Moscoso said she feared the men could be executed if a future administration extradited them to Cuba. The Cuban government called Moscoso a “protector of terrorism” and severed diplomatic ties with Panama. Venezuela did the same; the Venezuelan government has charged one of the men, Luis Posada Carriles, with blowing up a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing 73 people. Panama’s new president, Martin Torrijos, called the pardons “unacceptable,” but the men left the country days before he took office.
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