French court sentences Manuel Noriega to 7 years in prison

Reporting from Paris —  A Paris court on Wednesday convicted former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega of laundering the profits from drug trafficking and ordered him to be imprisoned for seven years.

The three-judge panel also ordered him to pay $2.88 million in French import duties from his frozen bank accounts and $1.26 million to the Panamanian government in damages.

The 76-year-old former general, who argued to be sent back to Panama, looked shocked as the verdict was translated into Spanish. He was led from the court by gendarmes.

Noriega’s lawyers and family members said they would consider an appeal. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. We are going to talk to our father now,” said his youngest daughter, Thays.

At his trial eight days ago, Noriega, who suffered a stroke four years ago and is reportedly partially paralyzed, had looked composed and smiled at his three daughters from the dock. But he appeared nervous Wednesday, licking his lips and nodding grimly at his legal team.

The former general was extradited to France in April after spending 20 years in U.S. custody, much of it in prison on a drug trafficking conviction.

Wednesday’s retrial verdict replaces an earlier French court decision. In 1999, Noriega was convicted in absentia of stashing millions of dollars from a Colombian cocaine cartel in French bank accounts and luxury Parisian properties in the 1980s. He was handed a 10-year jail sentence and a $14.1-million fine.

Noriega, who waged a long battle from his Miami prison cell to fight extradition to France, denied the money came from drugs, saying it was part of his brother’s inheritance, his wife’s personal fortune and payments from the CIA.

In the Paris retrial, his defense team had argued that the former dictator had the right to be treated as a prisoner of war and should be sent back to Panama under the Geneva Convention, though he could face prison there in connection with charges of human rights abuses.

Noriega’s lawyers complained that he was being held in squalid conditions in a small cell without running water, which they said did not befit his status as a prisoner of war and former head of state.

They also decried the trial as part of a U.S. conspiracy to keep Noriega behind bars.

“This sentence is curious,” said defense attorney Olivier Metzner. “The court is asking a man who has already served 20 years in prison to go back to prison.”

Once backed by the CIA as a countervailing force to leftist influence in Latin America, Noriega fell out with the U.S. government in the late 1980s when it was reported he had become involved in drug trafficking and was collaborating with Cuba.

In 1989, President George H.W. Bush sent American troops to Panama to capture the general, who sought refuge in the Vatican Embassy.

During a 10-day standoff, U.S. troops surrounded the building and blasted it with heavy metal music. Noriega eventually surrendered.

Willsher is a special correspondent.