On September 9 Michael Truman, a spokesman for the US Bureau of Prisons announced that former Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega has a September 7, 2007 parole date. The announcement has sparked a fair amount of discussion and speculation, but the Torrijos administration by and large doesn't want to talk about it.

Whisked away from Panama in the wake of the December 1989 US invasion without benefit of legal extradition proceedings, Noriega was convicted in a Miami federal district court of drug trafficking and conspiracy charges and sentenced to 40 years in prison. That term was later reduced to 30 years. William Hoeveler, the trial judge in the case, upheld the general's claim to prisoner of war status, which has given Noriega some unique privileges at the federal detention center in Miami where he is held. US federal prisoners ordinarily serve two-thirds of their sentences, with further time reductions if they behave themselves while incarcerated. By all accounts the former strongman has been a model prisoner.

The legal complications in this case are that Noriega was tried in absentia by Panama and convicted three times of murder and for several other offenses, for which he received prison sentences ranging from eight to 20 years. In 1994 Panama formally requested his extradition from the United States, but Washington has never bothered to answer that petition.

The political complications are first that Noriega once dominated the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) which now controls the Panamanian government's legislative and executive branches, and second that the man is a symbol of both the abuses of 21 years of dictatorship and of an American invasion in which hundreds of innocent non-combatant Panamanians were killed and thousands were left homeless. His return to this country would entail the reopening of old social wounds that have never entirely healed.

The Torrijos administration has tried to duck questions about Noriega's release date. Vice President and Foreign Minister Samuel Lewis Navarro called the news of the impending parole "speculation." A spokesman for the Presidencia said that Martín Torrijos won't have anything to do with whether Noriega returns to Panama after release by American authorities, arguing that this is a judicial matter over which the executive branch has no control.

However, extradition requests, though they may originate with prosecutors and courts that are independent of presidential authority, must be sent to foreign governments through the Ministry of Foreign Relations, which is very much answerable to the president.

The relatives of Dr. Hugo Spadafora (for whose murder Noriega was convicted in absentia), former President Guillermo Endara, former Supreme Court Magistrate Aura Emérita de Villalaz and retired General Rubén Darío Paredes (whom Noriega forced out as commander of the Panama Defense Forces) have all called in various Panamanian media for Noriega's return to Panama to serve his sentences here.

Some of Noriega's friends and lawyers, however, argue that the US non-response to the 1994 extradition request or the former strongman's prisoner of war status would legally serve to prevent his forced return to Panama.

Regardless of any extradition formalities, the normal course of action when a foreign citizen is released from a US prison after serving a long sentence is that the person is deported as an undesirable alien. But in deportation proceedings a person can often avoid a forced departure by voluntarily leaving the United States, which might leave an opening for the 65-year-old Noriega to go into exile in some third country that's willing to take him in.

General Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno