Panama's former strongman Manuel Noriega's doctors, from left, Eudes Moscoso, Eduardo Reyes, Emir Perez and Jose Lopez attend a joint press conference in Panama City, Tuesday, March 13, 2012. Doctors stated that Noriega has depression, heart trouble and a disease called cerebral meningioma, a benign tumor, asking authorities that the former dictator, a high-risk patient, serves his sentence at his home or in a hospital. Noriega returned to Panama on Sunday, Dec. 11, 2011 concluding his extradition from France after more than 20 years in U.S. and French prisons for drug trafficking and money laundering.
(AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)
Doctors: Manuela Noriega has benign brain tumor
Panama's former strongman Manuel Noriega's doctors, from left, Eudes Moscoso, Eduardo Reyes, Emir Perez and Jose Lopez attend a joint press conference in Panama City, Tuesday, March 13, 2012. Doctors stated that Noriega has depression, heart trouble and a disease called cerebral meningioma, a benign tumor, asking authorities that the former dictator, a high-risk patient, serves his sentence at his home or in a hospital. Noriega returned to Panama on Sunday, Dec. 11, 2011 concluding his extradition from France after more than 20 years in U.S. and French prisons for drug trafficking and money laundering.
(AP Photo/Arnulfo Franco)
March 13, 2012
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PANAMA CITY—Doctors in Panama said Tuesday that former dictator Manuel Noriega has a benign brain tumor, a possible heart condition and other ailments that raise the risk of him dying in prison.
A team of private doctors hired by Noriega's family said in a press conference that the penitentiary where the 78-year-old Noriega is being held lacks the medical facilities to treat him in case of an emergency.
Lawyers for the former strongman are seeking to have him serve out his 60-year sentence in a hospital or under house arrest, but the doctors said this decision depends on an evaluation by Panama's Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences.
Neither authorities at the prison where he is being held, nor the hospital where he has been treated in the past, were immediately available for comment.
"From the start of our meetings with the team of lawyers, we have given them all the elements emphasizing that (Noriega) is a high-risk patient and that his confinement where conditions are not in place increase the possibilities of his premature death," said Eduardo Reyes, one of the four medical experts in the news conference.
In early February, Noriega was transferred from prison to a hospital because of extreme hypertension. He was later returned to the penitentiary.
Noriega was toppled by a 1989 U.S. invasion and served 17 years in a U.S. prison for drug trafficking. He was later convicted in France of money laundering.
France sent him home on Dec. 11 to serve a combined 60-year Panamanian prison sentence on murder, embezzlement and corruption charges.
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