In spite of arriving to Panama under the condition of prisoner, the ex-president Ricardo Martinelli was taken to the clinic where the dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega also was confined: these are the similarities of the two cases

After spending almost a year in a federal prison in Miami, Ricardo Martinelli, who was president of Panama between 2009 and 2014, was extradited on Monday, June 11, to his country. The 66 year-old expresident will be judged on charges of diversion of funds and espionage. Although in Panama there are other charges that involve him, he will only be tried for espionage.

Leer en español: La extradición del expresidente Martinelli: ¿otro Noriega en Panamá?

Martinelli's legal team tried to avoid the extradition of the former president, warning that the politician risked being tortured if he was imprisoned in his country, but for the US State Department, which approved the extradition, said argument lacked force and veracity.

A case similar to that of Manuel Antoino Noriega, not only because of the prison

Manuel Antonio Noriega, who was a military dictator in Panama from 1983 to 1989 and who was captured by the United States, was extradited to Panama after having served time in the United States and France. Ricardo Martinelli, for his part, although he had no debts with the US justice system, spent a year in prison while the US State Department gave his approval. He was captured in Miami, due to the red circular filed by Interpol at the request of the government of Panama.

Martinelli not only arrived in Panama to the same prison where Noriega was held, but also had to go for health complications to the same hospital, the Santo Tomás Hospital. Noriega was detained in the hospital before undergoing surgery for a brain tumor, but he died weeks after the operation and had been in an induced coma. The Martinelli case is related to cardiac complications, and on the same afternoon he arrived in Panama he had to be transferred. The following Tuesday after the first hearing in the Supreme Court, he was held in intensive care at that hospital.

The Panamanian Prosecutor's Office has announced that it will ask that Martinelli be sentenced to 21 years in prison, according to the prosecutor handling the case, Harry Díaz. However, Martinelli's legal team, headed by his lawyer Sydney Sittón, stated that they will request the house for jail, taking IGNORE INTO account the health complications of the exmandatario. For Mitchell Doens, a political opponent, "the maneuvers of Martinelli's defense want to create possibilities of delaying the process to finally remain under house arrest." Doens says it is like seeing the Noriega case again, with the difference that there is only one crime to judge, espionage, but that even if you are given the 21 years of prison requested by the prosecution, in less than 10 years Martinelli would be transferred to a house to pay for their crimes.

Martinelli and the scandal

The politician and businessman Ricardo Martinelli made his fortune with a chain of supermarkets, but left Panama in January 2015 when he learned of an open investigation in the Supreme Court for an alleged embezzlement of 45 million dollars from a school feeding program, money that it was destined to an espionage network that reached more than 150 people among journalists and politicians. He settled in Miami, United States, where he was arrested in September 2017. Due to the treaty of extradition between the United States and Panama, the defendant can only answer for the crimes that are mentioned in the extradition request, in this case espionage.

LatinAmerican Post | Carlos Eduardo Gómez Avella

Translated from "La extradición del expresidente Martinelli: ¿otro Noriega en Panamá?"