Murdered activist priest’s remains  not identified

 48 years after the disappearance of a Colombian Catholic priest who supported agricultural workers in their struggles with landowners in Santa Fe de Veraguas his remains have still not been identified.

Héctor Gallego, who founded the Cooperativa La Esperanza del Campesino, was arrested freedom, tortured and murdered on the night of June 9, 1971, in Santa Fe, by soldiers of the then National Guard.

Gallego, born in a small town in Antioquia in 1938, came to Panama with a specific mission: to dignify

the exploited peasants, which immediately alienated him with the landowners in the area, who

accused him of being a communist  The historian Omar Jaén told Acan-Efe News Agency  that the Torrijos regime “overvalued the threat of Father Gallego” and that his disappearance weakened him both internally, where he tried to consolidate his “revolution”, and in the negotiations with the United States for the recovery of the Panama Canal.

Gallego is one of 110 victims officially identified by a commission that investigated the Panamanian dictatorship, which began in 1968 with a military coup and ended in 1989 with a bloody US  invasion although it is believed that there are many more “disappeared”

Three soldiers were convicted in 1993 in the Gallero  case, but no trace of his body was found

Investigations of the Public Ministry now indicate that some bones found in 1999 belong to the priest.

Edilma Gallego, sister of the priest said that she is disappointed not to get an official version of the  DNA test.

“Nothing is official, I have not received any Legal Medicine document or the Public Ministry to confirm,” said Edilma, who added that she has  only information that other people had sent