Posted on 07/08/2009 6:45:48 AM PDT by Ebenezer
(English-language translation)
MIAMI - Panamanian General Manuel Antonio Noriega appealed yesterday to the United States Supreme Court as a last legal recourse to avoid his extradition to France after an appeals court ruled that he may be sent to Paris, where he faces money-laundering charges.
Seventy-three-year-old Noriega, who is serving a prison sentence in Miami for allowing cocaine shipments from the defunct Medellín Colombian drug cartel to Panama, went to the nation's highest court to argue that, being a prisoner of war, he must be sent back to Panama in accordance with the Geneva Convention.
Noriega asks U.S. high court to bar extradition
Tuesday, July 07 2009 @ 06:21 PM EDT
Contributed by: Don Winner
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)
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