Word: noriega
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Since the U.S. military invaded Panama last December and brought back General Manuel Noriega for trial in Miami on drug-trafficking charges, the former dictator has had just one link to the outside world: a beige telephone sitting on a shelf outside his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. The phone has two little stickers attached, one in Spanish, one in English, warning him that all calls are monitored. If Noriega wants to make a call, a guard dials the number and waits for a reply before handing over the instrument. Only conversations with Noriega's defense lawyers are deemed...
...Noriega's Sixth Amendment right been violated? Last week his lawyers were loudly claiming so and seeking to have Noriega's case dismissed. The action came after the Cable News Network revealed that it had obtained jailhouse tapes of phone conversations between the deposed leader and his American lawyers. CNN aired tidbits of Noriega speaking with a Panamanian buddy named "Lucho," and another that referred to the CIA, President Bush and Noriega's legal strategy. Noriega's flamboyant defender, Frank Rubino, pronounced himself "totally startled and horrified" at the government's snooping. He said the taping "without a doubt" violated...
Rubino won a 10-day restraining order barring the network from airing further tapes. CNN appealed the order, then defied it, broadcasting a conversation between Noriega and a private investigator on his defense team. On Saturday the Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit rejected CNN's appeal of the restraining order. At the same time, Rubino sought a contempt ruling against the network...
...controversy placed an added burden on U.S. Federal District Judge William Hoeveler, who is supposed to try Noriega's case in January. Earlier in the week, the judge had decried his "unfortunate and difficult task of resolving a conflict between two fundamental constitutional rights," the right to counsel vs. the "sacrosanct" First Amendment freedom of the press from prior restraint...
...months ago. The chief source of unhappiness is the refusal of President Guillermo Endara's administration to sign a treaty that would, among other things, allow American investigators to look into secret bank accounts. Without such scrutiny, U.S. officials maintain, Panama will remain what it was under Manuel Noriega: a prime money-laundering center for drug cartels. And President Endara's problems extend well beyond the disapproval of his American benefactors. Some of his own colleagues complain about the influence exerted on Endara, 54, by his bride of five months, Ana Mae Diaz Chen, 23. Aides say the President...