For more than three decades, the mystery of who blew Alas Chiricanas Flight 901 out of the Panama sky, killing all 21 aboard, including 12 top Jewish businessmen and three U.S. citizens, remained unsolved and mostly forgotten by the outside world. The small commuter plane to Panama City exploded July 19, 1994, shortly after takeoff from Colon, leaving only one body in the wreckage, not positively identified for years: a Middle Eastern male thought to have carried the bomb aboard.

But now Panamanian authorities have the bombing’s suspected Iranian-backed Hezbollah mastermind in custody: Ali Zaki Hage Jalil, a 57-year-old Colombian-Venezuelan of Lebanese descent. A revelatory terrorism trial of the century is on the immediate horizon.

Judicial proceedings in Panama City promise to spotlight for Americans how Iran still fields clandestine networks in America’s backyard. These can target the large U.S. citizen expatriate population living in Central America and Mexico as well as thousands of regional American businesses.

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