This research paper discusses and analyzes the international
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 Court on
twelve federal felony criminal counts under an indictment that
had been filed against him in absentia in 1988.1 After a trial
before a jury which lasted seven months, Noriega was found guilty
in April, 1992 on eight counts of racketeering, conspiracy and
cocaine smuggling. In July, 1992, he was sentenced to forty years
in federal prison, which the trial judge later allowed him to...