Noriega Appeal, Raising Host of Thorny Issues, Likely to Reach Supreme Court : Law: Ex-dictator’s attorneys are expected to seek ruling on U.S. authority to seize foreigners for trial.

The legal battle in the wake of the conviction of deposed Panamanian dictator Manuel A. Noriega will go to the Supreme Court and ultimately challenge the authority of the United States to seize a foreign leader and bring him to trial, legal experts predicted Friday.

Defense attorneys plan to pursue a host of other thorny issues as well: whether Noriega was treated properly while in custody, where his phone calls were monitored and tape-recorded; whether he technically was a prisoner of war and should have been treated as such, and whether his rights to due process were violated when his overseas bank accounts--containing $20 million--were frozen.

Whatever the outcome, however, Noriega still faces a second U.S. criminal case in Tampa, Fla., on charges of marijuana smuggling and money laundering. And Panama has served notice it wants to try him on murder and corruption charges.

Furthermore, two voluminous civil proceedings await him in Miami, where the Panamanian government is seeking to recover $6.5 billion in damages from the former dictator and the now-discredited Bank of Credit & Commerce International for alleged fraud while Noriega was head of state.

But it is the appeal of Thursday’s conviction on eight of 10 drug and racketeering charges that will entail the most difficult legal questions.

Jeffrey Weiner, president of the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he expected the U.S. invasion of Panama in December, 1989, in which Noriega was toppled and later taken into custody by American troops, to be “a major ground for his appeal.”

“It goes to the whole issue of (whether there was) misconduct by the U.S. government,” Weiner said in an interview. “However, I’m not especially hopeful that Noriega can prevail in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.”

The appellate court, based in Atlanta, generally has ruled in favor of the government in matters involving drug crimes, demonstrating less concern about individual rights, critics have said.

Frank A. Rubino, Noriega’s chief defense attorney, said he anticipated that the case ultimately would have to be decided by the Supreme Court “because it involves some very unique and complex issues.”

Among them, he said, is whether Noriega should have been treated as a prisoner of war--and protected by the provisions of the Geneva Convention--and whether the federal court system had jurisdiction to try him.

In addition, Rubino has protested that Noriega’s attorney-client privacy rights were violated when federal officials routinely monitored and recorded his phone calls from prison, including some to his lawyers’ offices.

Charging that the trial was “a political case, not a drug case,” Rubino criticized what he said was an assumption by the U.S. government that it could impose its will on any foreign leader who failed to pay homage to Washington.

The Bush Administration has claimed the right to seize fugitives in foreign lands wanted for crimes against Americans.

U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler, who presided at the trial, ruled against Rubino on all his challenges to U.S. custody and jurisdiction. Hoeveler also found no violation of Noriega’s attorney-client privilege on grounds that the overheard phone calls in question were insignificant, even though Cable News Network obtained and broadcast parts of some tapes.

Myles Malman, a member of the prosecution team, said Friday that Hoeveler’s record of avoiding reversal by higher courts “is one of the best in South Florida.”

“Not only is Hoeveler an excellent judge,” said Malman, “but we presented as careful and as strong a case as we possibly could. We tried to minimize any legal issues that could come up on appeal.”

Hoeveler has scheduled Noriega’s sentencing for July 10 and could order the maximum punishment of 120 years in prison. Although judges rarely give the maximum, prosecutors expect that the former dictator, now 58, will spend the rest of his life in a U.S. prison. He will remain in custody throughout the appeal process.

The sentence in the Miami case would be in addition to any in connection with the separate three-count indictment in Tampa in which he is charged with accepting payoffs in a marijuana-smuggling conspiracy. Hoeveler permitted some testimony about this case in the Miami trial but cautioned jurors they were only to consider it as a secondary or “corollary” matter if they felt it helped prosecutors show a pattern of conduct.

The chief witness in the Tampa indictment, Steven Michael Kalish, told jurors in the Miami trial that he took a briefcase stuffed with $300,000 to Noriega in 1983 to seal a deal that allowed him to ship marijuana through Panama and launder his cash profits in Panama’s banks.

Kalish is serving a multi-year sentence for drug crimes. Noriega, if convicted in Tampa, could receive an additional 35-year term.

Although some attorneys question the wisdom of trying Noriega on a new round of drug charges, other government officials have argued the Tampa case should go forward as a hedge against the possibility that his Miami conviction is reversed.

James McAdams, the acting U.S. attorney in Miami, said he could not predict when, if ever, Noriega would be sent back to Panama to face charges of political corruption and of ordering the brutal murder of Dr. Hugo Spadafora, a political opponent, in 1985.

Meanwhile, the civil litigation has been awaiting conclusion of criminal proceedings against Noriega, and could be delayed further by the Tampa case.