Manuel Noriega Asks US High Court to Bar Extradition

[magbana]

REUTERS: Noriega asks U.S. high court to bar extradition
Posted by: "Jane Franklin" [e-mail]
Wed Jul 8, 2009 6:55 am (PDT)
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSTRE5666U520090707

Twenty years ago Washington overthrew the Panamanian Government, captured President Noriega, and imprisoned him in Florida. Guillermo Endara was sworn in as president of Panama at a U.S. military base in the middle of the first night of the invasion. Noriega has remained in the Florida prison. Please take a look at Panama: Background to the U.S. Invasion of 1989 at http://janefranklin.info for how Washington prepared for that coup and carried it out.
Jane Franklin
http://janefranklin.info

You can also watch an excellent documentary about the invasion, "The Panama Deception" at the following URL. It's about 90 minutes long.
http://hcvanalysis.wordpress.com/panama-deception-video/

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Noriega asks U.S. high court to bar extradition
Tue Jul 7, 2009 4:14pm EDT

MIAMI (Reuters) - Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to block his extradition to France, where he was convicted in absentia on money laundering charges.

U.S. courts ordered Noriega sent to France after he finished his U.S. prison sentence for drug trafficking in September 2007. He has remained in a Florida prison pending appeals.

His lawyers contend that as a prisoner of war, Noriega must be sent back to Panama. Two courts have already rejected the argument, prompting the appeal to the highest U.S. court.

"We still believe that he is a prisoner of war and based on that, he has to be repatriated," Noriega's attorney, Frank Rubino, said.

An army general and one-time CIA informant, Noriega was captured in Panama in January 1990 after U.S. troops invaded the country. He was declared a prisoner of war during his trial in Miami on drug trafficking charges.

Noriega was convicted of trafficking, racketeering and conspiracy in 1992.

His attorneys say extradition to France, where he was convicted of laundering cocaine profits through French banks and using the money to buy three luxury apartments, would violate his rights under the Geneva Conventions, which govern the treatment of prisoners of war.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta rejected that argument in April, ruling that the Geneva treaties do not bar his extradition to France.

"The Eleventh Circuit's interpretation ... is the complete repudiation of the Geneva Convention," Noriega's attorneys wrote in their appeal to the Supreme Court.

"Its interpretation ... threatens our Nation's commitment to international humanitarian law," they added.

France has offered a guarantee that it will safeguard Noriega's POW rights.

(Reporting by Jim Loney; Editing by Eric Walsh)