Federal judge lifts Noriega extradition stay News
Federal judge lifts Noriega extradition stay

[JURIST] A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida [official website] on Wednesday lifted the stay [order, PDF] blocking the extradition of former Panamanian military leader Manuel Noriega [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] to France, where he is wanted on money laundering charges. This latest order comes two days after the US Supreme Court declined to reconsider [JURIST report] Noriega's petition to stop the extradition process. His lawyers filed the petition last month after the Supreme Court denied certiorari [JURIST reports] on the case in January. Noriega, who has been declared a prisoner of war, sought to enforce a provision of the Geneva Convention [ICRC backgrounder] that requires repatriation at the end of confinement.

Noriega has been fighting extradition [JURIST report] since 2007. He is wanted in France on charges of money laundering through French banks. Noriega and his wife were sentenced in absentia [Reuters report] to 10 years in jail in 1999, but France has agreed to hold a new trial if he is extradited.

THIS DAY @ LAW

UN General Assembly approves Palestine partition plan

The UN General Assembly approved UN Resolution Resolution 181 (II) on November 29, 1947, recommending that the British Mandate for Palestine be split into a Jewish state, an Arab state, and an international zone for Jerusalem. The vote in the assembly was 33 for to 13 against, with 10 abstentions. The resolution sparked a war between Palestinian Arabs and Jews in 1947 and a wider war after Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, and Lebanon invaded the new State of Israel in 1948. Read Resolution 181 (II).

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