Noriega returns to Panama a largely irrelevant man

JUAN ZAMORANO

Asso­ci­ated Press

PANAMA CITY, Panama — More than two decades after the U.S. forced him from power, Manuel Nor­iega returned to Panama on Sun­day as a pris­oner and, to many of those he once ruled with impunity, an irrel­e­vant man.

Some Pana­ma­ni­ans feel hatred for the for­mer strong­man and rejected Amer­i­can ally; a few oth­ers nos­tal­gia. But as he returned to his native coun­try for the first time since his ouster, it seemed like few peo­ple had any strong feel­ings at all.

There were no legions of admir­ers at Panama City’s Toc­u­men air­port when the Span­ish Iberia air­lines’ flight touched down, deliv­er­ing him from Paris’ La Sante prison after a stopover in Madrid. The crowds in the cap­i­tal Sun­day were of hol­i­day shoppers.

Nor­iega, who has served drug sen­tences in the United States and a money-laundering term in France, was whisked by heli­copter to the El Renacer prison to serve out three 20-year sen­tences for the slay­ings of polit­i­cal oppo­nents in the 1980s. An ele­vated plat­form was set up at the prison so jour­nal­ists could watch him enter, giv­ing Pana­ma­ni­ans what likely was their only glimpse of the man who once ran the coun­try like his pri­vate fiefdom.

Author­i­ties sowed con­fu­sion at the prison by first wheel­ing in a per­son thought to be Nor­iega in a wheel­chair, cov­er­ing him with what appeared to be a coat so his face could not be seen. But then a con­voy arrived about a half hour later, trig­ger­ing spec­u­la­tion the first per­son was a decoy.

Rox­ana Mendez, the inte­rior min­is­ter, later told the TVN news chan­nel was Nor­iega was in the sec­ond convoy.

“We reit­er­ate that we had to safe­guard the phys­i­cal safety of Nor­eiga,” she said.

The lack of a view of Nor­iega afforded by the tight secu­rity frus­trated some Panamanians.

“We are dis­ap­pointed at the exces­sive secu­rity that kept us from see­ing the pris­oner,” said Aure­lio Bar­ria, a mem­ber of the old oppo­si­tion to Nor­iega, who was once known for his snappy mil­i­tary uni­forms and nation­al­is­tic swagger.

“Why not let him be seen? What are they hid­ing? We want to see him hand­cuffed in a cell,” Bar­ria told TVN.

About a dozen pro­test­ers, iden­ti­fy­ing them­selves as rel­a­tives of army offi­cers shot by Noriega’s forces, gath­ered at the prison’s main entrance. One held a sign say­ing “Jus­tice, Nor­iega, Killer.” Another woman shouted “Die, you wretch! Now you’re going to pay for your crimes.” It was unlikely the ex-dictator could hear her.

Pres­i­dent Ricardo Mar­tinelli said Nor­iega “should pay for the dam­age and hor­ror com­mit­ted against the peo­ple of Panama.”

Down­town, some peo­ple could be heard bang­ing pots and honk­ing car horns, a sym­bolic ges­ture of repu­di­a­tion that activists had sug­gested to show their rejec­tion of Noriega.

The 77-year-old for­mer gen­eral returned to a coun­try much dif­fer­ent from the one he left after sur­ren­der­ing to U.S. forces Jan. 3, 1990. The gov­ern­ment, once a revolv­ing cast of mil­i­tary strong­men, is now gov­erned by its fourth demo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected president.

El Chor­rillo, Noriega’s boy­hood neigh­bor­hood and a down­town slum that was heav­ily bombed dur­ing the 1989 inva­sion, now stands in the shadow of lux­ury high-rise con­do­mini­ums that have sprung up along the Panama Canal since the United States handed over con­trol of the water­way in 2000.

The rot­ting wooden ten­e­ments of the com­mu­nity have been replaced by cement hous­ing blocks. Noriega’s for­mer head­quar­ters have been torn down and con­verted into a park with bas­ket­ball courts.

While some Pana­ma­ni­ans are eager to see pun­ish­ment for the man who stole elec­tions and dis­patched squads of thugs to beat oppo­nents bloody in the streets, oth­ers believe his return means little.

“I don’t think Nor­iega has any­thing hugely impor­tant to say,” said retired Gen. Ruben Dario Pare­des, who headed Panama’s army before Nor­iega took over in the early 1980s. “The things he knows about have lost rel­e­vance, because the world has changed and the coun­try has, as well.”

“In pol­i­tics, he won’t have any great impact, because the peo­ple of Panama have other con­cerns,” said Marco Gan­dasegui, a soci­ol­ogy pro­fes­sor at Panama’s Cen­ter for Latin Amer­i­can Studies.

Things were dif­fer­ent in the 1970s and 1980s, when Nor­iega, whose pock­marked face earned him the nick­name “Pineap­ple Face,” became a valu­able ally to the CIA. At that time, Nor­iega helped the U.S. com­bat left­ist move­ments in Latin Amer­ica by pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion and logis­ti­cal help, and also acted as a back chan­nel for U.S. com­mu­ni­ca­tions with unfriendly gov­ern­ments such as Cuba’s.

But as the Cold War waned, Nor­iega became a more pow­er­ful and unfor­giv­ing dic­ta­tor at home. Ten­sions devel­oped between the strong­man and U.S. offi­cials, who also had been aware for some time that he was also work­ing with the Colombia-based Medellin drug cartel.

On Dec. 20, 1989, more than 26,000 U.S. troops began mov­ing into Panama City, clash­ing with Nor­iega loy­al­ists in fight­ing that left sec­tions of the city dev­as­tated. Twenty-three U.S. troops, 314 Pana­man­ian sol­diers and 200 civil­ians died in the operation.

The dic­ta­tor hid in bombed and burned-out neigh­bor­hoods before he sought refuge in the Vat­i­can Embassy, which was besieged by U.S. troops play­ing loud rock music. When he gave up he was flown to Miami for trial on drug-related charges.

Nor­iega was con­victed on the U.S. drug traf­fick­ing charges two years after the inva­sion, and served 17 years. He received spe­cial treat­ment as a pris­oner of war and lived in his own bun­ga­low with a TV and exer­cise equipment.

When his sen­tence ended, he was extra­dited to France, which con­victed him for laun­der­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in drug prof­its through three major French banks, and invest­ing drug cash in three lux­ury Paris apartments.

In Panama, Nor­iega was sen­tenced in absen­tia for the mur­ders of mil­i­tary com­man­der Moi­ses Giroldi, slain after lead­ing a failed 1989 rebel­lion, and Hugo Spadafora, a polit­i­cal oppo­nent found decap­i­tated on the bor­der with Costa Rica in 1985. He also was con­victed in a third case involv­ing the death of troops who aided one of his oppo­nents in a rebel­lion, and could be tried in the deaths of other opponents.

Unlike his minimum-security digs out­side Miami, Noriega’s cell at El Renacer will be spartan.

Nor­iega “will be located in an indi­vid­ual cell, with­out lux­u­ries and in sim­i­lar con­di­tions to the rest of the inmates,” Inte­rior Min­istry spokes­woman Vielka Prit­si­o­las said.

Pic­tures posted on the ministry’s web­site showed a cell with lit­tle more than a bed, a table, and a shelf. The cell has its own tiny bath­room, rel­a­tively wide win­dow slits and door screens that look out onto a sunny, trop­i­cal space with plants.

Noriega’s lawyers in Panama have said they plan to request house arrest under a law that allows those over 70 to serve their sen­tences at home. Noriega’s legal team says he has blood pres­sure prob­lems and is par­a­lyzed on the left side as a result of a stroke sev­eral years ago.

Hat­uey Cas­tro, 82, a Nor­iega oppo­nent who was detained and beaten by his hench­men, says it is about time Nor­iega paid for what he did.

“Nor­iega was respon­si­ble for the inva­sion and those who died in the oper­a­tion,” he said. “He dis­hon­ored his uni­form, there was barely a shot and he went off to hide. He must pay.”

Oth­ers are more sym­pa­thetic toward the aging ex-general. When last seen dur­ing his extra­di­tion from the United States to France, he appeared to have dif­fi­culty walk­ing and was assisted by others.

“This man has paid for his crimes, and it looks like he can hardly walk any­more,” said 67-year-old retiree Hildaura Velasco. “If he dies in prison, or at home, what does it matter?”

Although they are prob­a­bly in a minor­ity, there are also those who har­bor a cer­tain nos­tal­gia for the Nor­iega era. Panama has seen a spike in street gangs and drug vio­lence since his ouster.

The coun­try also remains a base for inter­na­tional drug traf­fick­ing and money laun­der­ing, and suf­fers from income inequal­ity. Its gov­ern­ment is strug­gling with an ambi­tious plan to expand the Panama Canal more than a decade after it regained con­trol of the water­way, and to bal­ance for­eign invest­ment in tourism and min­ing against con­cerns they could harm the environment.

Where Mar­tinelli, the cur­rent pres­i­dent, rose to promi­nence as a super­mar­ket mag­nate, Nor­iega worked hard to develop the image of a man of the peo­ple. His pri­vate life was that of a rich man, but pub­licly he stressed his hum­ble ori­gins and spent week­ends court­ing the res­i­dents of rural towns and villages.

Nor­iega “did bad things, but he also did good things,” said Sabina Del­gado, 60, a mother of six who has lived her whole life in El Chor­rillo, which has been hit by a wave of vio­lent gang crime. “Imag­ine, when he was here, the coun­try didn’t have as much crime. There weren’t as much drugs, there was more control.”

Posted by AP News on Dec 11 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.