EL GENERAL NORIEGA REGRESA A PANAMA

THE frail 77-year-old who touched down on Panamanian soil yesterday for the first time in over two decades bore little resemblance to the bellicose, machete-brandishing dictator of old, bar his famously pockmarked face.
Manuel Antonio Noriega’s return, almost 22 years to the day since the US launched a military invasion to capture him, met with muted reaction. A small band of civil-rights activists took to the streets to reiterate their demands for the former general to spend his remaining days behind bars. Conversely, in an impoverished barrio of the capital where Mr Noriega once drew his most fervent support, hawkers were selling “I love Tony” T-shirts. But most people were more interested in preparing for Christmas.

Mr Noriega was a valued ally of the United States during its proxy wars against leftist guerrillas in Central America in the 1980s. But following the unravelling of the Iran-Contra affair, beginning in 1986, he fell foul of the reorientation of American policy. After years of ignoring Mr Noriega’s facilitation of drugs smuggling by Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel, in 1988 the American government declared the narcotics trade a major threat to American society.
American attitudes were further hardened by the Noriega regime's increasingly brutal suppression of political opposition, and its bloody squashing of an attempted coup. By the end of 1989 the United States had, for the first time in its history, launched an invasion to capture the de-facto leader of a foreign nation for trial in America under American law for crimes committed in a foreign country.

In 2007 Mr Noriega ended a 17-year stretch in a Miami prison for drug-trafficking, racketeering and money-laundering. He was then extradited to France, where he was convicted on further money-laundering charges. During his 20 months in Paris’s La Santé prison he encountered Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, the Venezuelan terrorist better known as Carlos the Jackal. “We know some of the same people. We talk about the past,” Mr Sánchez told a French radio network via telephone.

Mr Noriega now faces a further 20 years in prison in Panama, having been convicted in absentia of crimes including the murder of political opponents. But the previous Partido Revolucionarion Democrático (PRD) government passed legislation allowing prisoners over the age of 70 to serve out their term under house arrest. Civil-rights groups fear the clearly ailing Noriega could be permitted to live out his days in comfort amid family and friends.

For years Panama made no efforts to seek Mr Noriega’s repatriation. But Ricardo Martinelli, elected president in 2008 after the press brought up links between his PRD opponent and the Noriega regime, appears to have spied a political opportunity. It is, he believes, the PRD, which developed as the political wing of the now defunct Panama Defence Force (PDF) during Panama's period of military rule, that stands to lose most from the reopening of old wounds.

But Mr Martinelli himself may not be entirely immune. Last year authorities opened an investigation into Gustavo Pérez, Mr Martinelli's personally appointed police chief, following revelations of his role in taking US civilians hostage during the 1989 invasion, when he was a PDF lieutenant. Mr Pérez was not charged, but it is clear that even the government can be affected by the fallout that comes with reviving the past.

As part of the general wiping of the slates, last year two of Mr Noriega’s former houses (a small fraction of his assets confiscated by the state after his ouster) were belatedly put up for auction, valued at $3.6m. There were no takers. No one, it seems, relishes a potential legal battle over property rights with the former general, however frail he may appear.
Mr Martinelli says the houses will be demolished to make way for a park. But as some people in Panama may be about to discover, erasing the past rarely proves so straightforward.VISIT PANAMA