Omar Torrijos

Omar Torrijos (February 13, 1929 - July 31, 1981) was the de facto leader of Panama from 1968 to 1981. Torrijos never held elected office in Panama, and was never president. He did hold the title of "Maximum Leader of the Panamanian Revolution" during a period in the late 1970s.

Torrijos is best known for negotiating the treaties that eventually gave Panama full sovereignty over the Panama Canal, in 1978.

General Torrijos died with several others when his aircraft, a DeHavilland Twin Otter (DHC-6), exploded during its flight. The aircraft disappeared from radar during severe weather, but due to the limited nature of Panama's radar coverage, the plane was not reported missing for nearly a day. The crash site was located several days later, and the body of General Torrijos was recovered by a Special Forces team in the first few days of August. Following a large state funeral, Torrijos was briefly buried in a cemetery in Casco Viejo (the Old City of Panama), before being moved to a mausoleum in the former Canal Zone near Panama City. He was succeeded as commander of the National Guard and de facto leader of Panama by Florencio Flores Aguilar, who later gave way to Rubén Darío Paredes.

Torrijos' death generated charges and speculation that he was the victim of an assassination plot. For instance, in pre-trial hearings in Miami in May 1991, Noriega's attorney, Frank Rubino, was quoted as saying "General Noriega has in his possession documents showing attempts to assassinate General Noriega and Mr. Torrijos by agencies of the United States." Those documents were not allowed as evidence in trial, because the presiding judge agreed with the U.S. government's claim that their public mention would violate the Classified Information Procedures Act.

More recently, former businessman John Perkins, alleges in his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, that Torrijos was assassinated by American interests, who had a bomb planted aboard his aircraft. The alleged motive is that some American business leaders and politicians strongly opposed the negotiations between Torrijos and a group of Japanese businessmen led by Shigeo Nagano, who were promoting the idea of a new, larger, sea-level canal for Panama. Manuel Noriega, in America's Prisoner, confirms that these negotiations had evoked an extremely unfavorable response from American circles. Torrijos died shortly after the inauguration of US President Ronald Reagan, just three months after Ecuadorian president Jaime Roldós Aguilera died in strikingly similar circumstances.