Miami, Florida - (Client/Dictator Review Press): US federal judge William Turnoff dismissed attempts by former Reagan/Bush1 client dictator Manuel Noriega to stop the former Panamanian leader's extradition to France next month to begin a 10 year custodial sentence for a 1999 money-laundering conviction obtained in absentia.
The 73 year old has been in a Miami slammer since 1992 convicted of federal charges of cocaine trafficking, racketeering, and money laundering, activities which originally financed the CIA's dirty tricks department when George Herbert Bush was the agency's CEO back in the 1970s.
But France has insisted he is extradited to serve his ten year sentence for using their admittedly risible banking system to launder over $3 million of cocaine dealing proceeds and judicial authorities have reserved a cell for the Noriega right next door to their very own infamous terrist Carlos the Jackal.
Meanwhile Panamanian President Martin Torrijos has interceded and petitioned the US Justice Department for Noriega to be returned to Panama to serve a sentence for the murder of a government opponent.
But US Justice Department officials have said this is redolent of a typical General Pinochet scenario which would end up with Noriega's mass adulation as a national savior rather than the corrupt narcotics peddler that he really is.
Up to fifteen other countries have previously applied for Noriega's extradition on a variety of drugs, narcotics, money-laundering and extortion charges.
Most of these attempts however were rumbled as attempts to spring the mobster into a lifetime of luxury in tinpot dictator republics thriving on the very proceeds of narcotics crime that earned Noriega his 15 year Miami sentence.
At one stage even the Vatican tried to send the Panamanian former military dictator a one-way ticket to their holy sanctuary after guaranteeing his lifelong prayer and meditation penance under their protection.
But that too was rumbled after Interpol proved that Pope JP2 Lodge was toying with the idea of giving the Panamanian thug a $5 million annual sinecure and palatial residences in return for Noriega dropping any testimony he had somehow gotten hold of regarding Wojtyla's role in the 1982 'suiciding' of "God's Banker" Roberto Calvi.
