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InSight Crime's 2021 Homicide Round-Up

InSight Crime

1 February 2022

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Panama: 12.8 per 100,000

Long among Latin America's safest countries, Panama's extended trajectory of steadily increasing violence continued in 2021, with 554 homicides and a homicide rate of 12.8 per 100,000 citizens, according to official data from the Attorney General's Office. There were 57 additional killings last year, an increase of about 11 percent from 2020.

In a statement to EFE, Police CommissionerJohn Dornheim said that "more than 70 percent of the homicides are related to national and transnational organized crime," a claim supported by a string of violent killings in the Central American nation.

Most notably, three members of the Los Galácticos gang were gunned down in late October in a nightclub in San Felipe, the historic old town of Panama's capital. The shooting allegedly stemmed from a cocaine shipment that the gang had stolen.

Panama's gangs have grown bolder in recent years. To be sure, alleged hitmen killed Public Registry Deputy Director Agustín Lara while he was participating in registration day for his party, the ruling Democratic Revolutionary Party (Partido Revolucionario Democrático - PRD), in the crime-ridden San Miguelito area of Panama City, La Prensa reported.

With many of the country's killings occurring near drug-trafficking hotspots, the increasing flow of cocaine through the shipping hub to destinations in Europe and elsewhere is likely to blame for the growing reach of organized crime in the Central American nation.

ID: N874

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