For the past week and continuing on through this week, the trial on the murder of 12-year-old José Rafael Llenas Aybar has practically monopolized the attention of Dominicans. The murder occurred on 3 May 1996 and the body of the child was found with 34 knife wounds in the back. The trial is being televised and radiocast to the nation, a situation which only has occurred in the past during the trial against Rufino de la Cruz, assassin of the Mirabal Sisters, and that of corruption in office during the Salvador Jorge Blanco presidency. Dominicans seem to have made theirs the trial, that has become a warning to every parent to stay close in tune with teenage children and their friends. Mario José Redondo Llenas and friends fell prey to the influence of Luis Palmas, husband to the Argentinean ambassador in the DR, a well known international gangster who head a ring that performed kidnappings in Argentina of bankers and other wealthy persons, and who reportedly was sent to the DR to get him out of Argentina. Here he is known to have used several classmates of his son Martin Palmas to try to set up a similar operation as evidenced during the trial. Despite his absence, Palmas and son will be judged in Santo Domingo, once the trial against Redondo Llenas and Moliné Rodríguez concludes. Meanwhile, Sammy Sosa’s quest to break the Roger Maris record is second in the attention of Dominicans, leaving the institutional crisis that has evolved from the internal crisis within the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano to a distant third. As a result of the crisis, the Chamber of Deputies has only held sessions twice of nine working days. Congressmen are the best paid Dominican public servants.
