General Manuel Noriega, Panama’s former strongman, went on trial in Paris today on charges of money laundering following his extradition from the US two months ago.
Noriega, who is 76, faces a maximum 10–year prison sentence if found guilty of using 2.3 million Euros of drug money to finance the purchase of luxury flats in the French capital in the 1980s.
The pock-marked soldier, nicknamed Pineappale Face, who was toppled in a US invasion of Panama in 1989, was given a 10 year sentence by a Paris court in absentia a decade ago, but has to be re-tried under French law following his transfer from Miami.
Noriega was given a 40–year sentence in the US for drug trafficking and money laundering – subsequently reduced to 17 years for good behaviour – and fought his extradition to France upon his release from jail in Florida.
But the US administration accepted the French demand to try him on accusations of using money from the infamous Medillin drug cartel to pay for three flats in Paris and shopping trips for Felicidad, his wife, and their two daughters.
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The once feared dictator is said by his lawyers to have become a frail old man in ill-health whose only desire is to return to his native Panama. He has claimed diplomatic immunity as a former head of state and denied France’s right to put him on trial.
The trial is due to end on Wednesday.