Dictator extradited to France to face money-laundering trial

FORMER Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega arrived in France yesterday to face money-laundering charges after being extradited from the United States.

A new legal battle will now begin for the 76-year-old, who was removed from office in a US invasion in 1989 and went on to spend two decades behind bars near Miami for drug racketeering.

Noriega landed at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport on a direct flight from Miami. He will face a prosecutor to hear the French charges next Monday, and then see a judge in Paris who will determine whether he should be jailed pending an eventual trial, one of his defence lawyers said.