On December 20, 1989, during the commemoration of the 33rd anniversary of the invasion of Panama, the Commission announced the first positive identified through DNA among the victims disappeared due to the North American invasion.
Is about ISMAEL ENRIQUE DORCY SEGURA, who was identified among 32 bodies exhumed from the Jardín de Paz Cemetery during the year 2020.
Through international legal assistance, the result was received from Guatemala, where the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) carried out the genetic analysis. The case for the disappearance of Mr. Dorcy Segura was reopened in January 2019 by the Public Ministry of Panama, at the request of the Commission on December 20, 1989.
Now it is expected that the Public Ministry and the Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences carry out the necessary protocols for a dignified delivery to their relatives, who have been informed of the discovery over the weekend.
According to his family, Ismael arrived from Penonomé at his grandmother’s house located on West 19th Street in El Chorrillo on the night of December 19, 1989, had dinner and then went out into the street and in the surroundings he met his sister and with a neighbor, who were the last people to see him alive, minutes before the invasion began.
His father’s complaint in 1990 describes the efforts to find him: «I wish to state that I have visited various hospitals: the Santa Fe Hospital, the Metropolitan Complex, Santo Tomás and the Military Pavilion, to no avail, because I have not found him. Later, I went to the Peace Garden in Parque Lefevre where there is a common grave, but his name did not appear on that list either. I also signed a complaint about the disappearance of my son at the International Red Cross, the National Red Cross, at the Committee for Human Rights of Panama and at the Omar Torrijos Foundation and no one has given me an answer”… “Also at the Star of Panama I took a small gloss announcing the disappearance of my son and my telephone numbers for information». Later on he says: «With my presence I wanted to see if I could at least find the body of my son, for which I participated in the two exhumations carried out in the Garden of Peace on April 28 and May 5 (**) without obtaining positive result”.
At the time of his disappearance, ISMAEL ENRIQUE DORCY SEGURA was 32 years old and the father of a 7-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl.
(**) The exhumations were carried out in 1990.
