Weight lifted from Martinellis shoulders

Ricardo Martinelli, Panama’s former president who ruled the most corrupt administration in the country’s history feels as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders after presenting a handwritten note to his lawyers waiving a bail and habeas corpus appeal.

The move which would clear the way for his extradition to Panama to face trial for massive snooping with Israeli electronic snooping equipment,  on political opponents, journalists and businessmen, came on Wednesday  as Martinelli approached his first anniversary in a sparse prison cell in a Miami, Florida detention center, but The US Prosecutor’s Office is reluctant to respond to the request.

Panama lawyers Sidney Sitton and Cristóbal Arboleda, who are in Miami, told TVN News after a meeting with the former president, that Martinelli is calm and feels that a weight was removed when making the decision.

But the path to extradition still has potholes  Sittón said that “the prosecutor resists abandoning or withdrawing from the appeal filed by the bail that was granted to Ricardo Martinelli, even when the defense has indicated that it waives the petition “.