Prisoners Of War

A federal judge on Wednesday approved U.S. plans to send former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega to France to face money-laundering charges, finding the French government had given sufficient assurances it would continue to treat Noriega as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Paul Huck followed three other court decisions approving extradition.

Over the years, Ben Waldron's weathered World War II journal has been in its share of tough spots: hidden inside a dank latrine, stowed in the false bottom of a soldier's wooden trunk, tucked among the fronds of a banana-leaf roof. But now the dog-eared, secretly written chronicle of the former Army corporal's brutal 3 1/2 years as a Japanese prisoner of war is in its toughest fix yet.

Despite continuing tensions between Washington and Tehran, five Iranians in U.S. military custody in Iraq since January received their first visit Saturday from Iranian diplomats. The meeting took place at a U.S. military facility in or near Baghdad, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari told The Times. "We've been working on this for quite some time, to organize a consular visit for the Iranian Embassy to visit their detainees with the U.S. military," Zebari said. "I think it's a good gesture."

On the night of May 9, an insurgent leader gathered recruits at a farmhouse in this lush agricultural region along the Euphrates River. He handed out weapons and then, after midnight, led his followers to a road on which two U.S. Humvees sat guard. As the insurgents, moving on foot, neared the Humvees, they heard the engines running. They retreated into the thick foliage lining the road, apparently thinking the troops were on a heightened state of alert. Two nights later they returned.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- In 1981, rookie Rep. Bill Hendon left a Capitol Hill intelligence briefing convinced that there were American prisoners of war from Vietnam still alive and in captivity in Southeast Asia. Nearly three decades later, he says, they're still there -- and still alive. "Absolutely," Hendon said. "No question about it." It's a position ridiculed by both government officials and former POWs who spent years in captivity during the Vietnam War.

President Bush surprised Congress by refusing to sign a Defense Department authorization bill, in part because the legislation could revive a lawsuit brought by American prisoners of war during the 1991 Persian Gulf War who say they were tortured by the Iraqis. Their suit sought to establish the principle that war prisoners who were tortured in violation of the Geneva Convention were entitled to sue the country that tortured them.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia reportedly told an overseas audience this month that the U.S. Constitution did not protect foreigners held at America's military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Scalia also told the audience at the University of Freiberg in Switzerland that he was "astounded" at the "hypocritical" reaction in Europe to the prison, said this week's issue of Newsweek. The comments came weeks before justices were to take up an appeal from a detainee at Guantanamo Bay.

A Dallas man who spent years recounting his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam has been revealed as a fraud. John Powell, 57, told his wife, friends, veterans and others that he spent more than three years in captivity, even sharing his story in articles and videos, the Dallas Morning News reported. But when he tried to get a fishing boat under the guise of being a former POW, veterans investigated and discovered he never served in Vietnam.

For Karnit Goldwasser, the hardest part is "to go to sleep alone and to wake up alone." Goldwasser went from student to international figure after her husband, Ehud, and another Israeli soldier, Eldad Regev, were captured by Hezbollah fighters July 12 while on patrol near the Lebanese border. "On July 12, my life was over. I woke up as an ordinary person, but since that day I wake up with the same goal.... My own war is to bring my husband back home," she said.

Activists here celebrated the announcement Tuesday that the last four British prisoners being held at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, would be freed, but they said they would continue to campaign on behalf of hundreds of inmates from other countries still detained without trial. In Washington, the Pentagon announced that the four Britons and an Australian would be released from U.S.