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Rubino says that Noriega, too, wants to go home to Panama. He says the former strongman, who now walks with a stoop and is 73 (or 69 according to the birth date cited by Assistant U.S. Attorney Pat Sullivan in court documents), wants to spend his final days with his grandchildren as an "elder statesman." Rubino wonders why his client can't just go home to face the music. "He committed the heinous crime of purchasing an apartment in Paris," Rubino, says in a mocking tone. "That's more important than murder and kidnapping?" Noriega's POW status would...
...Attorney's Office in Miami successfully met the requirements for extraditing Noriega to France in demonstrating the French had probable cause for charging the deposed general for money laundering. There is also a valid extradition treaty between the U.S. and France. The next step will be for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to sign off on Noriega's surrender to France...
However, legal scholars maintain that sending Noriega - currently the world's only recognized prisoner of war - to France would violate the terms of the Geneva Convention if Paris fails to accord him POW status. Despite assertions from the U.S. Attorney's Office in Miami that the French government intends to honor the Geneva Convention, Noriega's Miami-based lawyer Frank Rubino maintains that may not be the case. "The French Ambassador to Panama - Pierre-Henri Guinard - publicly stated Gen. Noriega will not be treated as a prisoner of war but as a common criminal," Rubino told U.S. Magistrate William Turnoff...
...There is a principle here that certainly transcends Noriega and that's strict interpretation of the Geneva Convention," says Jon May, Noriega's Fort Lauderdale-based attorney. "Strict interpretation protects our soldiers around the world... In [The Black Hawk Down incident] in Somalia we went to warlords and said we expect you to respect the Geneva Convention. During the first Desert Storm issues of the Geneva Convention came up all the time. There may be no sympathy for Gen. Noriega, but that doesn't mean we don't respect his rights...
...present, Noriega resides in a special cell in the Federal Correctional Institute in Miami. His POW status affords him customized living quarters that resemble a condo more than a prison cell, what with its exercise machines, telephone and color TV. If he were treated as a common criminal, says attorney May, "He could be put with violent criminals, where he could be subjected to harsher humiliating treatment, where he could not receive the kind of exercise and fresh air and light that he is entitled to in the U.S." There may be some justice in that. Just not the kind...