Word: noriega
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Though Noriega may disclose embarrassing details about his ties to Washington, his chances of beating federal case 88-79-CR look dim. The Justice Department and the DEA have launched a full-court press against him, with at least a dozen federal prosecutors and 25 DEA agents working on the case for the past year and a half. Although the State Department long viewed the Noriega indictment as a handy political stick with which to oust a greedy and unsavory ally, the Miami prosecution team sees it as a pure and simple drug case. "The alpha and omega of this...
...assemble those facts, DEA agents have tracked down more than 1,000 leads in Texas, Mexico, Chile, Canada, Germany, France, Belgium and even South Korea. Prosecutors have lined up a formidable rogues' gallery of drug dealers, $ dope pilots, shady businessmen and former Noriega military cronies to testify against him. The star witness will be Panamanian pilot Floyd Carlton Caceres, who claims he was the general's point man with the Medellin cartel. In addition, six of the 15 men indicted along with Noriega have been convicted and have turned state's evidence in exchange for a promise of leniency...
...General Noriega," grouses Rubino, "has been the greatest get-out-of-jail card ever." Rubino estimates that the government cut as many as 70 special deals to get testimony against the general. Tony Aizprua, the pilot whose plane landed on I-75, served no time at all, while Noriega's trusted bagman Lieut. Colonel Luis del Cid got his 70-year sentence reduced to a 10-year maximum. Another defendant who is presumably trying to cut a deal is Ricardo Bilonick, a Tulane-educated lawyer who was whisked back from Panama last week to face charges of running cocaine...
...troubling questions about America's justice system. Judge Hoeveler has said he is "deeply concerned about the image that this case seems to be acquiring, that the defendant is not going to be able to get a fair trial." Two issues in particular have prompted delays in the proceedings: Noriega's inability to pay lawyers because his bank accounts were frozen, and the taping of his attorney-client phone calls from prison...
...civil liberties aspect of the Noriega case is "unprecedented and somewhat disturbing," says Charles Maechling Jr., a specialist in international law. Lawyers point specifically to Noriega's long pretrial incarceration without an opportunity for bail. Some experts are also worried that Noriega's lawyers haven't fully explored his POW status or the jurisdictional question of kidnapping him and bringing him to Miami to trial. "How would we feel about Libyan squads coming to the U.S. to extract Islamic justice?" wonders Alfred Rubin, professor of international law at Tufts University...