wmlro.com: US Supreme Court says France can have Noriega when the US has finished with him.

France wants to try Noriega on charges of money laundering. The USA is insisting that he serve his sentence. Noriega wants to be repatriated to Panama, the country where he was a dictator who, some say, took a slice of every drug deal conducted internationally.

On 25 January, the US Supreme Court heard its second case involving Noriega. In 1990, CNN sued him and the United States to overturn an injunction preventing CNN from broadcasting a tape of discussions between Noriega and his lawyers. The case eventually reached the Supreme Court where the Court decided, seven to two, that freedom of the press is not absolute: it was held that there was a right to restrict broadcast where it was self-evident that result of such a broadcast was likely to reduce the prospect of a fair trial. Noriega was, of course, eventually convicted of drug trafficking, money laundering and racketeering. His sentence, in July 1992, was 40 years in jail.

But his second case did not have such a happy outcome. Noriega was due for parole in September 2007. At that time France asked that he be handed over. He applied to the District Court for an order quashing the decision to extradite him.

The Supreme Court was blunt in its decision: when he is eventually released from a US jail, he will be packed off to France to face trial on money laundering charges there.The Court decided that it would not even entertain argument. In effect, it was a summary dismissal of the application for the Supreme Court to hear an appeal and that it would not even give reasons for its decision to reject the application.

But the dissenting Justices, Scalia and Thomas (who sas cruelly parodied in TV programme Boston Legal as famously silent throughout hearings) said that the reason the Court would not explain its reasons were tied up with the fact that Noriega is, uniquely in the USA, held as a prisoner of war, but not convicted in a military court. And they disagreed with that view. Thomas said

"It is incumbent upon us to provide what guidance we can on these issues now. Whatever conclusion we reach, our opinion will help the political branches and the courts discharge their responsibilities over detainee cases, andwill spare detainees and the Government years of unnecessary litigation. These considerations alone justify review. That petitioner was convicted in federal court
(rather than in a military commission) in criminal proceedings uncomplicated by classified information or issues relating to extraterritorial detention is an additional reason to grant certiorari. It is our duty to say what thelaw is on important matters within our jurisdiction. That is what we should do."

Noriega argued that the District Court had defined him as a prisoner of war and that under the Geneva Convention he could not be extradited due to that status. The Convention, he said, required him to be extradited to France where he has already been convicted in absentia but a new trial has been promised if he turns up.

The US Government argued that the UN Convention is not "self-executing" - and also that it is an agreement between states and cannot be relied upon by individuals.

Thomas and Scalia said that they would have not rejected the application out of hand, and that they would have allowed the application to go to a full hearing, with full written decisions at its conclusion.

The US Government has previously said that it will release him into France's custody.

Of course, the simplest thing would have been to send him back to Panama aboard an Air France aircraft: once aboard, he would have been within the jurisdiction of France, and liable to re-arrest. Seemingly, no one wanted to be that pragmatic.

Noriega's US financial transactions were amongst the issues that led to the eventual closure and sale of Riggs Bank.