Free Republic

"The Abedin emails include a mid-August 2009, email exchange in which Band urges Abedin to follow up on a request from Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy to set up a meeting with then-Ambassador to Panama Barbara Stephenson on behalf of lobbyist Amb. Otto Reich, President Reagan’s ambassador to Venezuela who maintained high-level government positions during the tenure of both President George H.W. Bush and President George Bush. In early September, Ruddy then was contacted by State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roberta S. Jacobson, at the behest of Band and Abedin, in reference to Ruddy’s...

Richard Lehman sues Panama 03-11-2009 | BUSINESS WIRE The Lucom’s legacy would give the poor children of Panama $50 million Panama Star BOCA RATON, FLORIDA. Richard Lehman, a Florida attorney who was falsely charged with murder and over a dozen other crimes in Panama for his efforts to defend a $50 million food aid donation, has filed a human rights lawsuit against the country with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Organization of American States). “Panama continues to foster an atmosphere of corruption in the legal system which has caused it to be in violation of several human rights...

Staff Half of Panama’s population of children under the age of five is in grave danger of death from malnutrition. The country’s staggering 40 percent poverty rate is one of the worst in Central America. The late Wilson Lucom reportedly left $50 million to a trust intended to aid these starving children according to a secret will revealed upon his death in 2006. Lucom’s Panamanian wife Hilda and her children from a previous marriage are contesting the will and over two years of legal haggling between the two parties has not resulted in the resolution of the case. So far...