Word: noriega
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...government planning to sweep Manuel Noriega out of the country in the dead of night? The ex-dictator of Panama's defense attorneys on Wednesday morning filed an emergency motion to stay his extradition to France, citing plans to move the prisoner three days ahead of his scheduled release date. The general, who has Prisoner of War Status since the U.S. invasion of his country in late 1989, has been fighting the move, fearful that he will be tried as a common criminal by the French government...
...Emergency Motion for the Stay of Extradition reads in part: "In an effort to prevent General Noriega's lawyers from obtaining the evidence necessary to prove this claim, as well as further litigating his rights under the Geneva Convention, the United States intends to release General Noriega from the custody of the Bureau of Prisons tomorrow at midnight, three days ahead of his scheduled September 9, 2007 parole date. No doubt the United States has determined that the best means of ending this controversy is to whisk the General away under the cover of darkness...
Rubino says that Noriega, too, wants to go home to Panama. He says the former strongman, who now walks with a stoop and is 73 (or 69 according to the birth date cited by Assistant U.S. Attorney Pat Sullivan in court documents), wants to spend his final days with his grandchildren as an "elder statesman." Rubino wonders why his client can't just go home to face the music. "He committed the heinous crime of purchasing an apartment in Paris," Rubino, says in a mocking tone. "That's more important than murder and kidnapping?" Noriega's POW status would...
...France isn't the only country that wants Noriega. Panama wants him for the far more serious crimes of murder and human rights violations. "We requested extradition," says Frederico Humbert, the Panamanian ambassador to the U.S. "We insisted on it. If the U.S. court system decides he goes to France, he will then have to go to Panama to fulfill the time that he needs to pay for the crimes that he has been found guilty of in our courts." Over the years, the Panamanian government has made several extradition requests, the latest as recent as January...
...avoid difficulty, I would let the Red Cross visit him and if he wants to sit in [a French] cell in his Panamanian uniform, I'd let him." The option of wearing his khaki uniform with the stars on the epaulets is but one of the privileges afforded Noriega as a prisoner of war. At present, Noriega resides in a special cell in the Federal Correctional Institute in Miami. His POW status affords him customized living quarters that resemble a condo more than a prison cell, what with its exercise machines, telephone and color TV. If he were treated...