Nation IN BRIEF : FLORIDA : Witness Tells of Plot to Kill Noriega

Colombian drug barons contracted terrorists to kill Manuel A. Noriega in 1984, believing he had betrayed them to U.S. authorities, a witness testified in the ex-Panamanian leader’s drug trial in Miami. That account by confessed Colombian drug trafficker Cesar Cura differed from that of previous witnesses. Cura said he attended meetings with the Medellin cartel’s Ochoa family in which they targeted Noriega after May, 1984, raids on a drug lab in Panama and on cocaine-refining chemical shipments. He said he later learned that they had contacted ETA, a Basque separatist group. The plot was never carried out, Cura said.