U.S. Agrees to Give Noriega POW Status

The government agreed Friday to treat Manuel A. Noriega as a “prisoner of war,” but said the designation would not prevent prosecution of the deposed Panamanian dictator on drug trafficking charges in a U.S. civilian court.

In papers filed in federal court in Miami, Justice Department lawyers said the Geneva Convention permits prisoners of war to be prosecuted for ordinary crimes “as long as the same acts would be prosecutable if committed by a member of the armed forces of the detaining power,” in this case the United States.

Noriega’s lawyers argued at a court hearing last week that Noriega should be declared a prisoner of war and transferred from his Miami jail cell to the custody of a neutral country. His lawyers said the case should be relinquished by U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler so the trial could be held in the World Court at the Hague.

But the Justice Department, with the concurrence of the State Department, said in its legal brief that Hoeveler should not relinquish the case and that the World Court is reserved for disputes involving nations, not individuals.

Hoeveler is expected to consider the issue further at a hearing Thursday.

“Articles 85, 87 and 99 make it clear that the Geneva Convention specifically contemplates the prosecution of prisoners of war for civilian offenses committed prior to their capture,” the government’s brief said.

“Under international law, prisoners of war are immune from prosecution only for legitimate acts of war, such as the killing of an enemy soldier in combat.”

The Geneva Convention clearly “allows prosecution of prisoners for offenses committed before the time they came into U.S. custody,” the U.S. lawyers said.

Noriega surrendered to U.S. military authorities 10 days after the invasion of Panama last December. He had been “a fugitive” for nearly two years since his drug-trafficking indictments in Miami and Tampa, Fla., in February, 1988, the court papers said.

The significance of the U.S. legal position was underscored by the fact that the brief was co-signed by Assistant Atty. Gen. William P. Barr and four other Justice Department officials in addition to the prosecutors of the Noriega case.

The government’s brief said that it was not worth arguing whether Noriega would qualify as a prisoner of war by conventional standards because that would not alter the right of the United States to try him as an alleged narcotics conspirator.

The lawyers told Hoeveler that “the government intends to provide prisoner-of-war treatment to Noriega” and to a principal co-defendant in the case, Lt. Col. Luis A. del Cid of the Panamanian Defense Forces.

Such treatment, however, does not necessarily mean that Noriega and del Cid soon will be moved from their present cells in Florida, the lawyers said.

The Geneva Convention says that “absent their consent, prisoners belonging to the armed forces of one nation are not to be interned with prisoners from the armed forces of another nation,” the brief said.

However, “nothing in Article 22 or elsewhere prohibits the detaining power from temporarily transferring a prisoner to a facility other than an internment camp in connection with legal proceedings involving the prisoner,” the document added.

Briefing reporters on the issue, David Runkel, an assistant to Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh, said POW status means Noriega can direct any complaints about his prison conditions to a U.S. military liaison officer designated by the Defense Department. But Runkel stressed that the deposed strongman will not be moved to a military facility.

Prior to the government’s filing, del Cid’s attorney, Samuel I. Burstyn, filed a separate motion Friday demanding his client’s release. Burstyn cited a federal appellate case, U.S. vs. Toscanino, that says a prisoner should be freed if the court “finds that the United States government deliberately and unreasonably exploited illegal conduct in an outrageous fashion.”