Panama City--A Panamanian court has suspended the trial of former dictator Manuel Noriega over the 1970 disappearance of a leftist union activist, his lawyer said Wednesday.
Noriega, who is currently serving a 60-year sentence for the disappearance and killing of his opponents, was due to face a new trial Thursday for the disappearance of Heliodoro Portugal.
But his lawyer Ezra Angel said it was suspended because Panama is not allowed to bring new cases against the former strongman under the deal it struck with France for his extradition in 2011.
Noriega, who ruled from 1983 to 1989, has served prison terms in three countries since being ousted in a US invasion.
He was jailed for 20 years in the United States for drug trafficking, then extradited to France and jailed there two years for money laundering.
France then extradited him back to Panama, where he is in prison at the El Renacer penitentiary along the Panama Canal.
He has repeatedly asked to be transferred to house arrest because of failing health, but authorities have refused.
Noriega, 80, was head of the National Guard and the right-hand man to then-de facto dictator Omar Torrijos at the time Portugal was detained by the military in May 1970.
The union activist's body was found in 1999 outside an old military barracks near the Panama City international airport.
AFP
