ABDUCTION AND TRIAL OF MANUEL NORIEGA Thi

legal aspects of the abduction and trial of Manuel Noriega. In

1990 Noriega, the former Panamanian military strongman, was

kidnapped by the American military and returned to Miami where

he was tried and convicted on criminal charges. The Noriega and

other recent cases raise basic questions of international law

relating to the right of one state to apply extraterritorially

its criminal laws to the citizens of another state. Novel issues

arose because of the circumstances under which Noriega was

captured his status as a foreign head of state. A solid case can

be made that in all these instances, general principles of

international law were violated. The defendants in these cases

appear to have been guilty of the offenses charged. They were

otherwise unappealing figures. Their fates, nevertheless,

demonstrate the current lack of consensus in the international

community and in particular in the United States as to how such

principles should be applied in difficult cases.

On January 3, 1990, two weeks after the American invasion of

Panama in late 1989, Manuel Noriega emerged from the papal

nunciature in Panama City where he had sought refuge and

surrendered to United States Army forces. That same night, he

was placed under arrest in Panama by agents of the Drug

Enforcement Administration. He was then flown to Florida where a

few days later he was arraigned in a Federal District C

. . .
vernment. So, the prosecutors came up with the theory that Noriega had been taken as a prisoner of war. This led to a discussion by international legal scholars such as Charles Maechling as to whether the American invasion of Panama itself was lawful. The various legal and other rationale offered by the Bush administration for its military intervention in Panama were somewhat tendentious i.e the need to safeguard American residents there, defend Panamanian democracy (there had been none since 1967) or to protect the Panama Canal (which was not in any imminent danger). The United States asserted that it had sent its army to Panama to bring an international criminal, Noriega, to justice, a somewhat circular argument. Maechling argued that "the invasion grossly violated U.S. treaty commitments" such as the pledges of nonintervention in the Rio Treaty and the Charter of the Organization of American States. Maechling also said that "to make [Noreiga's violation of U.S. drug laws a principal justification of the invasion is to defy the most elementary principles of state sovereignty."11 The Economist said that the Alvarez and Noriega kidnappings raised the "specter of yanquis, scornful of international law, once again
. . .

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2922
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)