Ferdinand E Marcos

A federal judge said Friday that he will order two Swiss banks to turn over to court custody hundreds of millions of dollars from former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos' estate to partially satisfy a $1.9-billion verdict won by 9,400 victims of human rights abuse. U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real in Los Angeles did not issue a formal order but told attorneys for the banks and the victims that he plans to do so soon.

In an attempt to avoid a frontal assault on the secrecy of their operations, two large Swiss banks will hold a high-powered bargaining session in Hong Kong that could generate significant payments to 10,000 Filipinos, The Times has learned. The Filipinos are trying to collect on a $1.9-billion judgment against the estate of late Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos, stemming from a massive human rights case.

More than 9,000 victims of torture under the regime of the late Philippine dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos were awarded $766 million Wednesday by a U.S. District Court jury. Now lawyers for the 9,070 plaintiffs in the class-action suit must begin the daunting task of trying to collect the money from the Marcos estate over opposition from the current Philippine government.

A federal jury in Honolulu ordered the estate of the late Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos to pay $1.2 billion in damages to thousands of dissidents said to have suffered under his rule. The award was made in an unprecedented class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of more than 10,000 dissidents and political opponents alleged to have been subjected to torture, murder, rape and imprisonment from 1972 until the overthrow of Marcos in 1986.

Ferdinand E. Marcos was buried today, four years after his death in exile, in colorful services attended by his loyal supporters but shunned by the masses of Filipinos who banished him from power. The body of the late president, who died in exile in Hawaii on Sept. 28, 1989, was carried by 10 retired generals into a stone mausoleum next to his family home, where a funeral Mass was held earlier.

Seven years ago, Ferdinand E. Marcos was forced to flee for his life from his presidential palace in Manila as the Philippines' "people power" uprising ended his 20-year rule, marked by corruption and abuse. Today, the body of the man who died in exile in 1989--and is now considered by many to have been one of history's greatest plunderers--returned home for a long-delayed funeral and a hero's welcome from thousands of still-faithful supporters in his native province.

Dozens of people filed by the body of Ferdinand Marcos on Saturday during final services in Hawaii for the former Philippines president. A crowd of about 400 partially filled a Honolulu high school auditorium to pay their last respects. Marcos, who ruled the Philippines for 20 years with a dictatorial hand, was ousted from power in 1986 and granted exile in Hawaii by the United States. He died in Honolulu in 1989. Since then his body had been kept in an air-conditioned crypt.

Four years after he died in Hawaii, the body of former Philippine President Ferdinand E. Marcos will be flown back to his hometown in northern Luzon on Sept. 5 for an above-ground interment, the family said Monday. The late strongman has been kept in an air-conditioned crypt at the Valley of the Temple Memorial Park outside Honolulu since his death of natural causes Sept. 29, 1989.

A civil jury cleared Westinghouse Electric Corp. on Tuesday of involvement in a bribery scheme during the building of a Philippine nuclear power plant. The Philippine government had brought a civil suit charging that Westinghouse and the engineering firm Burns & Roe Associates had taken part in a $26-million bribery plot with former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos to get the plant built in 1976.

Opening arguments began Wednesday in a civil lawsuit against Westinghouse Electric Corp., culminating a five-year drive by the Philippine government to call a major American company to account for allegedly bribing the country's former dictator. The suit in federal court here charges that Pittsburgh-based Westinghouse paid about $17 million in bribes in exchange for a contract to build a $2.2-billion nuclear power plant that has never been used.