Associated Press
April 1, 1992
Myles Malman, left, and the rest of the prosecution team head to the Noriega trial Tuesday.
The former Panamanian leader protected the drug cartel, the jury is told.
By TIM COLLIE
Tribune Staff Writer
MIAMI — Though he once was a "classic dictator," deposed Panamanian leader Gen. Manuel Noriega is really nothing more than another corrupt cop seduced by drug money, a U.S. prosecutor told jurors Tuesday.
After six months of testimony, the trial of the only standing foreign leader ever seized by U.S. troops and brought to trial in this country entered closing arguments. The case seems likely to go to the jury by Thursday.
Noriega surrendered to U.S. troops after being toppled by the December 1989 invasion of Panama. He faces up to 160 years in prison if convicted on all 10 charges alleging he conspired with Colombian drug barons to ship cocaine to the United States.
In a three-hour summation that will continue today, prosecutor Myles Malman stuck to the government line that this was nothing more than a simple drug trial, free of the international politics and diplomatic intrigue that defense attorneys maintain is the real reason for Noriega's arrest.
"Manuel Antonio Noriega was a man of great, great power," Malman said. "He sold his uniform, his army and his protection to a murderous international gang known as the cartel of Medellin, Colombia."
"He was the classic dictator, yes. But as the evidence unfolded before you, he emerged as the corrupt, crooked, rotten cop. Nothing more, nothing less."
In slow, deliberate tones, Malman walked the jury through the evidence gleaned from 78 witnesses and more than 16,000 pages of documents.
He read testimony from drug pilots, Noriega's former aides and other key witnesses. He gave a brief biography of the Panamanian leader and his cohorts, then went into a history of Panama and the rise of neighboring Colombia's drug cartels.
Since only one government witness testified to actually seeing Noriega receive money from Medellin cartel representatives, the prosecution's summation was a carefully erected body of circumstantial evidence.
Using charts of names and dates of key players and events, along with poster-size photocopies of hotel registrations and flight plans, Malman showed how the testimony and evidence were consistent with the government's charges.
Anticipating a defense argument that the government has cut deals with a host of unsavory drug dealers who would say anything, Malman attempted to show how evidence and statements corresponded.
Malman asked the jury to use "reason, common sense and your own good judgment" in considering such evidence as documents that showed Noriega had 323 million in European bank accounts. The money could only have come from drug bribes, Malman suggested.
"Think of it. The top cocaine criminals in the whole world could not do their business, could not ply their trade, without his protection," Malman said, pointing to Noriega.
The general, meanwhile, sat in his four-star uniform resting his chin on one hand most of the day. He did not testify during the trial.
The defense is expected to stress the motives of the convicted drug dealers in testifying against Noriega and U.S. government documents and testimony from former officials that Noriega assisted federal officers in the anti-drug effort.
But "the issue is not whether Manual Noriega played good cop, whenever and wherever he wanted, in his own back yard, on his own terms," Malman said. "These are non-issues, smoke screens if you will, to divert your attention from the issue at hand, which is whether or not Manuel Antonio Noriega committed these crimes."
He urged jurors not to dwell on how Noriega was captured. That issue had already been dealt with by U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler, Malman told them.
"Politics plays no role in this case," Malman said.
The defense is to begin closing arguments today, followed by a prosecution rebuttal. The case then goes to the nine-woman, three-man jury, which will be sequestered in a Miami hotel and guarded around the clock by U.S. marshals.
Mid-Trial Offer of Probation for Client
