Israel's Foreign Minister, Gideon Saar, celebrated on Sunday the announcement of the extradition from Venezuela to Panama of Ali Zaki Hage Jalil, a suspect in the explosion of a Panamanian commercial aircraft in July 1994 that left 21 dead and which is believed to be linked to the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. "The attack on flight 901 in Panama in 1994, in which 20 passengers and crew members were murdered — most of them members of the Jewish community, including four Israelis — remains an open wound," Saar expressed in Spanish via a message posted on his X account. In the text, the minister stated that the decision to extradite Jalil from Venezuela, announced by the Panamanian Foreign Ministry on Friday, represents "a significant advance." "It is expected that this measure will promote the discovery of the truth and shed light on his ties with the terrorist organization Hezbollah, which also acts to spread terrorism in Latin America and represents a threat not only to Israel, Lebanon, and the Middle East, but to the peace of the entire world," Saar concluded his message. In 1994, flight 901 of the Panamanian airline Alas Chiricanas crashed a few minutes after taking off from the airport in Colón, Panama's second-largest city. The case was reopened following a request made in August 2019 by the Attorney General's Office of Panama, which was followed by the suspect's arrest in Venezuela in November 2025. In the attack, considered the most serious in the country's history and which remained unsolved, there were no survivors; and among the victims were a dozen businessmen from the Jewish community in Panama. The attack took place one day after the terrorist attack suffered by the Argentine Israeli Mutual Association (AMIA) in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people died and which also remains unpunished.
