“God Bless you,’’ Noriega told the French appeals court that announced the extradition approval yesterday. “God bless my family, God bless my enemies, God bless France.’’
“I want to return to Panama and prove my innocence,’’ he said, through an interpreter.
The decision comes after months of legal procedures focused on a man whose complicated past has kept judicial officials in three countries busy for years.
France’s prime minister, Francois Fillon, now needs to sign an administrative decree allowing for Noriega to be transferred.
“If Panama wants to do this very quickly, it will send a military plane, and as of tomorrow night, he could be in Panama City,’’ Olivier Metzner, a lawyer for Noriega, told reporters in Paris yesterday.
Friends and foes alike feared that Noriega might die in a French prison - notably Panamanians who fought against human rights abuses during his 1983-1989 regime. They want to see him face justice at home.
Noriega, a one-time CIA asset who lorded over Panama from 1983 to 1989, turned into an embarrassment for the United States after he sidled up to Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel and turned to crime.
In the waning days of the Cold War, Noriega was seen by President Ronald Reagan’s administration as a pivotal ally against the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua. But he eventually fell out with Washington.
In late 1989, President George H.W. Bush ordered an invasion to oust Noriega. The dictator holed up in the Vatican embassy, and US forces blasted it with incessant loud rock music until he surrendered in January 1990.
Taken to Miami, he was accused of helping the Medellin cartel ship tons of cocaine into the United States. Jurors convicted him in 1992 on eight of 10 charges, and he was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
After his US sentence ended, he remained in legal limbo in Miami from 2007 to 2010, when France sought his extradition to face money laundering charges. He was convicted in Paris and sentenced to seven years behind bars.
