Drug Cartel Pilot Pleads Guilty, Will Help Noriega Prosecutors

A former Colombian air force pilot accused of flying drugs to Panama and teaching another drug smuggler how to fly an airplane pleaded guilty to racketeering charges Tuesday and agreed to testify against former Panamanian strongman Manuel A. Noriega.

David Rodrigo Ortiz, 35, was secretly brought to the United States last month from France, where he is serving a 14-year prison sentence on unrelated drug charges. He is the sixth of Noriega’s 15 co-defendants to agree to help prosecutors in the case against Noriega, whose trial is scheduled to begin Sept. 3.

Ortiz was charged with racketeering and drug trafficking, and faced up to 35 years in prison. In exchange for Ortiz’s cooperation, federal prosecutors agreed to drop the trafficking charge and recommend a maximum 10-year term that would be served concurrently with his sentence in France.

The guilty plea was entered before U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler, who is presiding over the Noriega case.

Ortiz is not considered a major witness against Noriega, who is charged in a 1988 indictment with accepting some $4.6 million from Colombian drug lords for allowing U.S.-bound cocaine shipments to pass through his Central American nation. But Ortiz did admit that on the orders of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, he taught Floyd Carlton Caceres to fly in 1982, and then made several drug runs with him.

Carlton, said to be the chief liaison between Noriega and the Medellin drug cartel, is expected to be a major prosecution witness.

Ortiz was arrested in December, 1987, on the island of Guadeloupe, in the Lesser Antilles, with 1,000 pounds of cocaine. He was sentenced in France in March, 1989.

James R. Gailey, Ortiz’s court-appointed public defender, said both his client and his client’s family have received threats. Prosecutors have offered to place Ortiz in the federal witness protection program after he serves his sentence, Gailey said.