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SET FOR RELEASE IN US, NORIEGA IS WANTED BUT NOT DESIRED IN PANAMA.

Article Excerpt
Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno is scheduled for release Sept. 9 from the US federal prison cell in Miami he has occupied since 1989, but no one seems to know where he is going. The only certainty is that he is not going free. The Panamanian general and de facto dictator of Panama from 1983 to 1989 was never officially elected the country's president. As his sentence in the US ends, Panama wants him extradited home to face additional charges. France also wants him.

But Noriega does not want France. He is reported to think he stands a better chance of convincing his countrymen and women of his innocence of murder and living out his life in freedom than he does trying to overturn a 1999 trial in absentia in France that found him guilty of money laundering and sentenced him to ten years for transferring US$3 million to a French bank account between 1988 and 1989.

His lawyers in Panama petitioned the government to demand Noriega's extradition. "France does not have a greater right than Panama to demand Noriega," said attorney Julio Barrios. In the 1990s, Barrios was a member of the legal team that indicted Noriega for the murder of ex-guerrilla Hugo Spadafora, the crime for which Panama now wants him (see Update, 1993-03-05, NotiSur, 1996-04-05, NotiCen, 2002-05-02). "He told me...