Panamanian Opposition Leader Arrested, Exiled to U.S., Wife Says

Roberto Brenes, a Panamanian businessman and prominent opposition leader, has been arrested and exiled to the United States, his wife said Wednesday.

Mercedes Eleta de Brenes told a news conference that plainclothes officers of the Panama Defense Forces came to the couple’s home Tuesday night and arrested Brenes, 42. She said they refused to say why he was being detained.

An unidentified caller, whom she believed to be a representative of the Defense Forces, told her early Wednesday that the military had decided to send her husband into exile in the United States.

Brenes, president of the Assn. of Panamanian Business Executives and a leader of the opposition Civic Crusade, arrived in Miami on a Pan American Airlines flight shortly after noon Wednesday, she said. The Civic Crusade, a coalition of about 200 opposition business and labor groups, has spearheaded protests against military strongman Manuel A. Noriega.

Defense Forces spokesmen were not immediately available for comment.

Since last June, there have been few street protests against Noriega, and most of the Civic Crusade leaders have gone into exile in the United States, Spain or Venezuela.

Asked why she thought her husband had been exiled, Brenes said: “Because he has not been afraid to express his ideas, and because he doesn’t like this regime.”

Brenes’ arrest coincided with reports that a clandestine opposition radio had begun broadcasts inside Panama.

But at the news conference, spokesmen for the Civic Crusade denied that Brenes or any of the group’s members had any connection with the clandestine broadcasts.

Spokesmen for the U.S. Embassy declined to comment on the broadcasts or on Brenes’ detention.