Lawyer protests Noriega Thursday court appearance

FORMER PANAMA military dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega is due in court next Thursday. May 21,charged with the 1970 disappearance and death of Heliodoro Portugal, but his lawyer, Ezra Angel says he should not face justice for the disappearance in of the leftist leader because Panama undertook not judge him for that case.

Noriega, 80, has an audience in the Second Court of Justice for the disappearance and death of Portugal leader arrested by military agents in the Café Coca Cola in Panama City in May 1970.
However said Angel on Saturday, Panama is committed to France, which extradited Noriega in 2011, not to open more processes that led to his extradition to his home country, where he is serving several sentences for disappearance of opponents during his rule (1983-1989). “We request that the principle of specialty is respected in that Panama cannot judge, prosecute and investigate General Noriega for any offense committed prior to the extradition approved by France,” Angel told the AFP news agency.
Panama in 2010 asked France to extradite Noriega to serve his sentence for the disappearance and death in 1985 of political opponent Doctor Hugo Spadafora who was beheaded, and military officer Moses Giroldi, tortured and killed with several others after a revolt against Noriega in 1989.
According to several requests for extradition of 2010, to which AFP has had access the Panamanian government made a covenant” to the French authorities that Noriega “will not be judged for a past event” and he “will be subject to various sanctions” (the cases of Spadafora and Giroldi).
Portugal’s disappearance was when Noriega was chief of the National Guard and right hand of missing nationalist leader Omar Torrijos.
His body was found in September 1999 in the vicinity of a former military barracks. Noriega got three sentences of 20 years each for the cases of Spadafora, and the Giroldi “slaughter of Albrook”, in which several soldiers were tortured and killed after a revolt against him.
Overthrown in 1989 by a bloody US invasion, Noriega has spent more than 25 years in prison in the United States, France and Panama for drug trafficking, money laundering and disappearance of opponents. He is currently being held at the El Renacer Prison, whose latest inmates include disgraced former Supreme Court Judge, Moncada Luna. Ke suspects in the wiretapping and PAN scandals are also housed there