KEY POINTS:
General Manuel Noriega, the deposed dictator of Panama, is suddenly back on the battlefield.
Now in his early seventies and nearing the end of a jail sentence in the United States, he is embroiled in a new legal struggle over where he will be allowed to settle next.
Noriega, who is due to be released from prison in Miami on September 9, has his own plans - to return to his native Panama, a country that is much changed since his overthrow during an invasion ordered by former President George H.W. Bush in 1989.
The US Government, however, has other ideas.
Federal prosecutors this week argued in favour of extraditing Noriega to France where he could face another lengthy prison sentence after being convicted in absentia there in 1999 for using drugs profits to purchase luxurious apartments in Paris.
District Judge William Hoeveler, the same justice who presided over his original trial in 1992 - which ended with his conviction for protecting Colombian drugs cartels shipping cocaine through Panama to America - deferred a ruling until later this month.
Noriega was sentenced to 30 years in jail, but his term was reduced to 15 years for good behaviour.
Lawyers for Noriega, 72, insist that he was declared a prisoner of war after his removal from Panama and that extraditing him to France would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Famously, Noriega took shelter in the Vatican Embassy in Panama City after the US invasion but finally surrendered when the American military bombarded the building with ear-shattering rock music.
If Noriega's lawyers prevail, his return to Panama would not be easy. He would instantly have to fight another conviction relating to the murder while he was in power of former political foes, including opposition leader Hugo Spadafora, who was tortured and decapitated in 1985.
But because of recent changes in Panama's penal code, particularly with regard to criminals aged 75 or over, Noriega could escape with a relatively short jail term or even just house arrest. This has raised concerns in some quarters, not least in Washington, that he could eventually seek to return to politics - an option his lawyers say he has, in fact, ruled out.
Most observers argue that Noriega would be an irrelevant force in Panama.
In recent years it has disbanded its military, achieved galloping economic growth, fuelled in part by a property boom and an enormous project to expand the Panama Canal, over which it has gained sovereignty, as well as relative political stability with three successful presidential elections since his removal from the country.
And yet, Noriega, who for years before his overthrow was in the pay of the CIA, still has pockets of support among its citizens as well as contacts with the ruling party that he once headed. Indeed some of his former associates are now in ministerial positions in Panama today.
A recent poll in La Prensa paper reflected the ambiguity of ordinary Panamanians over whether he should face further justice at home. The newspaper found 47 per cent supported the further imprisonment of Noriega in Panama but 44 per cent said they would prefer to see him jailed in a third country.
Panama's Foreign Minister, Samuel Lewis Navarro, depicts him as a figure of a period most of his countrymen would rather forget.
The Panamanian Government has not pushed hard for Noriega's return and might find it convenient for him to be diverted first to France.
If Noriega is allowed back to Panama, the brother of the slain Hugo Spadafora, Winston Spadafora, said he would be at the front of the queue to question him: "I would like to ask him what he did with my brother's head."
- Independent
