On July 22

On this day in ...
... 1956, leaders from across the Americas concluded a multilateral conference by signing the Declaration of the Presidents of the American Republics. The declaration's hemispheric vision:

An America united, strong and benevolent will not only promote the well-being of the Continent but contribute toward achieving for the whole world the benefits of a peace based on justice and freedom, in which all peoples, without distinction as to race or creed, can work with dignity and with confidence in the future.

The conference "helped lay the groundwork for the creation of the Inter-American Development Bank and elements for the Alliance for Progress." (credit for photo of U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signing documents at the 1956 conference) It was held in Panama City in commemoration of the "first collective manifestation of Pan Americanism," an Assembly of Plenipotentiaries of the American States there, "convoked by the Liberator Simón Bolívar" in 1826. The 1956 effort has evolved into the Summit of the Americas process, which features meetings of governmental leaders that conclude with similar declarations. Most recent was the 5th summit, held in 2009 in Trinidad and Tobago; the 6th is set for 2012 in Colombia.

(Prior July 22 posts are here, here, and here.)

On April 22

On this day in ...
... 1959 (50 years ago today), Margot Fonteyn (left) arrived at an airport in New York after the diva ballerina had endured a 24-hour detention in Panama City, where authorities were looking for her husband, whom they suspected was planning a coup against the government. Fonteyn, who'd been born Margaret "Peggy" Hookham 40 years earlier in Surrey, England, told reporters she did not know the whereabouts of her husband, Dr. Roberto Arias, formerly Panama's ambassador to Britain. Within days his compatriots indeed would stage a failed coup. And in 1999 his aunt, Mireya Moscoso de Arias, would become Panama's 1st woman President.
... 1997, a 4-month siege by the Movimiento Revolucionario Túpac Amaru ended when troops stormed the Japanese ambassador's residence in Lima, Peru, and freed 71 hostages. A Supreme Court judge was the only hostage killed, in addition to all 14 hostage-takers and 2 soldiers. Subsequent inquiry revealed that a number of rebels had been executed after surrendering in building at right. That revelation led to criminal charges against the intelligence chief of the man then Peru's President -- Alberto Fujimori, himself, as we've posted, convicted of crimes just this month.

(Prior April 22 posts are here and here.)

On December 20

On this day in ...
... 1963 (45 years ago today), the Berlin Wall was opened for the 1st time in more than 2 years. Thousands of West Berliners streamed eastward after East German guards opened the Wall (right) (photo credit) at 5 checkpoints, a move aimed at allowing 1-day holiday visits among relatives in the divided city.
... 1989, U.S. troops invaded Panama City, Panama, in what was described as a "military operation ... designed to topple the Government of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega" (left), who'd been accused of major drug trafficking. Noriega would be caught within a week at the Vatican embassy where he'd sought sanctuary. As we've posted, he eventually was convicted in federal court, served his federal sentence. He remains in a U.S. prison pending litigation of requests for his extradition.

On November 10

On this day in ...

... 1821, the 1st grito de independencia -- cry for independence -- was heard in the town of Los Santos, in Panama. The cry was taken up elsewhere in what was then a colony of Spain, and by the end of the month separation from Spain and joinder with the Confederation of Gran Colombia , which Simón Bolívar had founded a couple years earlier, was achieved. This date is now a national holiday in Panama. (photo credit)

... 1975, the U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 3379, entitled "Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination," by which it "determine[d] that zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination." A decade and a half later, by its tersely worded Resolution 4686, the General Assembly (left) "decide[d] to revoke the determination."

On April 18

On this day in ...

... 1978 (30 years ago today), the U.S. Senate gave its advise and consent to a treaty transferring control of the Panama Canal to Panama. The decision to approve the pace sometimes known as the Carter-Torrijos Treaty, was a victory for President Jimmy Carter, albeit "by the narrowest of margins," the BBC reported. The margin of "68 votes to 32" was "just one vote more than the two-thirds majority required."

... 1945, Margaret Fitzsimmons was born in Dublin, Ireland. She grew up in London, England, and eventually married an Iraqi man, Tahseen Ali Hassan, with whom she moved to Iraq in the 1970s. Margaret Hassan (right) was a triple citizen, of Ireland, Iraq, and Britain. The head of CARE International's humanitarian aid effort in Iraq for a decade at the time of the 2003 invasion, in 2004 Hassan, 59, was kidnapped in Baghdad and eventually killed by her abductors. (photo credit)

On January 9, ...

... 1908 (100 years ago today), in Paris, a daughter, given the name Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand, was born to a woman of bourgeois upbringing and her husband, a legal secretary. Educated at private Catholic schools, at age 14 the daughter began a lifelong commitment to atheism. As a student at the Sorbonne Simone de Beauvoir took 2d place in the 1929 agrégation examination in philosophy, "barely losing to Jean-Paul Sartre who took first (it was his second attempt at the exam)." The 2 began a storied and lifelong partnership. Perhaps the most noted of Beauvoir's many books is Le Deuxième Sexe, her 1947 work of "philosophy on women from a feminist perspective." Following her death in 1986, Beauvoir (above right) was buried beside Sartre in Paris' Montparnasse cemetery.
... 1964, 21 Panamanians were killed while protesting U.S. control of the Panama Canal, an event marked in the country to this day as Martyr's Day. On this day in 1990, U.S. troops again were in the country, having toppled the government of Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega 3 weeks earlier.

On November 3, ...

... 1903, a crowd imprisoned 2 generals and so seceded Panama from Colombia following the latter country's rejection of the Hay-Herrán Treaty, which provided for U.S. control of a canal uniting the Atlantic and Pacific. President Theodore Roosevelt supported the secessionist move; indeed, an early dispatch indicated that the Central American isthmus might be annexed to the United States. Although that did not occur, U.S. recognition of the newly independent Panamanian state came quickly, as did construction of the canal. (photo of 1904 U.S. cutting courtesy of Panama Canal History Museum)
... 1937 (70 years ago today), U.S. Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Cal.) was born in Seattle.
... 1947 (60 years ago today), U.S. Rep. Mazie K. Hirono (D-Hawaii) was born in Fukushima, Japan.

Goodbye to "Get Out of Jail Free!" cards

There's much food for thought in the news of U.S. District Judge William M. Hoeveler's ruling that Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, due for release next week from U.S. federal prison, may be extradited to France, where he's been convicted in absentia of laundering proceeds from drug trafficking through French banks and the French real estate market.

There's the decision itself, of course:

Convicted of drug trafficking by a Miami-based jury in 1992, Noriega, de facto ruler of Panama at the time of his 1989 capture there by U.S. troops, enjoys, by judicial order, the status of a prisoner of war protected by the Third Geneva Convention. Hoeveler's decision hinged, therefore, on his conclusion that the Convention does not forbid transferring a POW to a 3d state for criminal trial. Noriega's attorney's said to be mulling "whether to challenge the ruling in the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit or with the United Nations." That last reference comes as a surprise. Can't think of any U.N. body that might be able to do anything enforceable in the matter except the Security Council, where, of course, the United States and France both have power to veto any such move.

And then there's the larger picture:

As more and more states reach outside their own territory to exercise criminal jurisdiction, it seems likely that the most notorious persons who suffer conviction and less-than-a-life-sentence in 1 sovereign state will look forward not to a final release date, but rather, on release, to a move to another jail in another sovereign state. Perhaps it's the ne bis in idem (that's double jeopardy, roughly speaking) overtones in this prospect that explain France's no-comment on the still-pending U.S. case -- as Reuters' Paris bureau put it, why France has made no official statement but instead "accepted the decision with prudence and discretion."

On July 10, ...

... 1985, shortly before midnight in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand, explosions 60 seconds apart exploded the stern of Rainbow Warrior (right), killing a crew member and sinking the flagship of an environment-focused nongovernmental organization, Greenpeace. The mining of the ship, which had been "preparing to visit Moruroa Atoll for a major campaign against French nuclear testing," later was linked to intelligence agents from France. France eventually paid New Zealand $7 million compensation.
... 1992 (15 years ago today), a federal judge in Miami sentenced Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, de facto leader of Panama until deposed by the U.S. military in 1989, to 40 years in prison following conviction on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges. The sentence was later reduced, and Noriega's possible release this year has begun to stir debate in Panama.