From: nyxfer%panix.com@UMCVMB.missouri.edu (N.Y. Transfer)
Subject: Noriega:Sentence 1st,Trial Later
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Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: University of Missouri
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@UMCVMB.missouri.edu>
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1992 21:57:38 GMT



Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit


         NORIEGA TRIAL: SENTENCE FIRST, VERDICT AFTERWARD

                          By Carl Glenn

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited.)

The trial in Miami of Gen. Manuel Noriega came to a conclusion on
April 9th with a mixed verdict. Despite more than two years of
pre-trial preparation by the U.S. government and a series of
illegal acts aimed at sabotaging the defense, the prosecution was
still unable to convict the Panamanian leader of two of the most
serious charges.

Nonetheless the Panamanian leader was convicted on six counts,
faces additional charges in another case to be heard in Tampa, and
is facing up to 120 years in prison at his sentencing scheduled
for July.

The trial of the former Commander in Chief of the Panama Defense
Force was one of the longest and costliest in U.S. history.

Ignored because of its importance?

The trial, like the invasion and occupation of Panama, received a
minimum of attention in the U.S. media. "The lack of interest of
the media," said Teresa Gutierrez of the Independent Commission of
Inquiry on the U.S. Invasion of Panama, "was not because they
thought the trial was unimportant. It was precisely because they
saw its significance that they were reluctant to cover it. The
trial was a crude effort to justify a murderous invasion, carried
out to crush the independence of a strategic Central American
nation," she said.  The commission was founded by former Attorney
General Ramsey Clark.

The judge and the prosecutors pretended this was a simple criminal
trial over drug trafficking with no political implications. No one
believes this. Bush himself could not allow the conviction of
General Noriega to pass without claiming political vindication in
the verdict.

The government called a succession of "witnesses" to whom they had
made cash payments totaling over $1.5 million. One such witness
for the prosecution was Max Mermelstein, who has admitted to
importing 56 tons of cocaine into the U.S.  and plotting the
murder of DEA undercover informant Barry Seal. Facing life in
prison without the possibility of parole, Mermelstein had spent
just two years in prison before his release. To date he has
received over $670,000 in cash rewards and living expenses for
himself and his family. Mermelstein, Carlos Lehder and other
witnesses for the prosecution had been convicted of crimes far
more serious than those of which Noriega stood accused.

Last August, the U.S. Congress's Government Accounting Office
reported that the level of narcotics trafficking through Panama
had actually increased since the U.S. kidnapped Noriega.

The United States was not at war with Panama when its huge
invading army, equipped with the deadliest and most advanced
weapons, came blasting out of the midnight sky four days before
Christmas in 1989. The invaders slaughtered thousands of
Panamanians, the majority civilians, and abducted General Noriega.

The U.S. military made no attempt to extinguish the blaze that
consumed the entire neighborhood of El Chorrillo and left a still
unknown number of dead and some 20,000 homeless war refugees.

The U.S. secretly buried Panamanians in common graves. Despite
fierce intimidation, in the months following the invasion nearly a
thousand family members came forward looking for information about
their missing relatives. The casualty list was "lost" by the
puppet government.

Neither the U.S. nor the government they installed in Panama made
any effort to determine how many were killed or to compensate the
victims and their families.  Hundreds of affidavits attesting to
the violence meted out to the civilian population were taken from
eyewitnesses and survivors by independent human-rights
organizations.

Why Washington did it

According to attorney Julio Berrios, former legal advisor to the
Foreign Ministry of Panama, the trial of Noriega has been
characterized by contradictions in the testimony of prosecution
witnesses.

Speaking on radio in Panama City, Berrios said the former Armed
Forces chief was captured and prosecuted as a "warning" to Latin
American leaders that they too can fall victim to reprisals if
they attempt to defy policies dictated by Washington.

Noriega himself has said that his fall from grace with U.S.
military and intelligence authorities began with his unwillingness
to assist the U.S. in a planned invasion of Nicaragua when it was
led by the Sandinista National Liberation Front.

The writer of this article visited Panama twice as an investigator
for the Commission of Inquiry.


                               ***

This article originally appeared in Workers World newspaper. A
10-week trial subscription is available for $2. A year's
subscription costs $15. Makes checks payable to Workers World, and
send to 46 W. 21 St., New York, NY 10010.Phone (212) 255-0352. You
may contact Workers World editors on NY Transfer or PeaceNet at
"workers."

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