According to the executive decree published in the Official Gazette, the Foreign Ministry will guarantee the necessary resources for the operation of the group, created in 2016 to investigate human rights violations during that aggression, which claimed dozens of lives and brought missing persons and the destruction of several villages.

The Commission has focused its work on the identification of victims of the invasion, and among its purposes is to get the exact number of people killed and injured during the US military intervention.

The group is currently seeking to identify more victims of the invasion, so it has asked people with missing or deceased relatives to donate DNA as part of the process.

Last May, the Commission sent 28 samples of victims of the invasion to the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation for their respective analyses and is expected to submit a final report on its work.

For the families of the victims and for the country as a whole, these tasks are of paramount importance, as the identification of the remains not only provides closure and peace to the beloved ones, but also strengthens Panama’s commitment to human rights and historic memory.

According to data from different public institutions and the Catholic Church, over 600 people were killed during the invasion, in addition to others who are missing and more than 2,000 who were injured, but the group investigating the events estimates that more than 4,000 people were killed.

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