Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega had been locked up in a federal prison outside Miami for less than a week when a package arrived for him. Inside was a leather-bound copy of the Soul Winner's New Testament, an evangelical text designed to convert people to Christianity.
It was January 1990. Noriega, who died Monday at 83, had surrendered to U.S. forces at the beginning of that month following the military invasion of Panama under President George W. Bush.
Noriega's New Testament came from the Rev. Clift Brannon, an evangelical minister from Longview, Texas, who claimed to have seen the deposed dictator carrying a Bible under his arm as he turned himself over to his captors.
Over the course of more than two years, while awaiting trial on federal drug trafficking charges, Noriega, a nominal Roman Catholic, underwent a full-fledged conversion to evangelical Christianity -- a transformation guided by Brannon and another minister, and consummated by his baptism in a portable fiberglass tub in the atrium of a federal courthouse, surrounded by a dozen guards.
Once a U.S. ally and CIA asset, he became a repressive dictator in the years before he was ousted from power, accused of ordering the murder of his opponents and turning Panama into a haven for drug cartels.
If a write-up from American Rehabilitation Ministries, a Christian-run prison outreach program, is to be believed, Noriega responded to Brannon's gift in a letter on Jan. 10, 1990, thanking him for the copy of the Scriptures.
As soon as Brannon received the letter, he applied for a permit to visit Noriega in prison, according to the ministry program.
Brannon and another minister, the Rev. Rudy Hernandez of San Antonio, were soon conducting weekly religious instruction sessions, according to a 1991 story in The New York Times, which backs up some of the ministry's account. Brannon led the sessions while Hernandez translated in Spanish.
Noriega, a former Roman Catholic known to have dabbled in the occult, embraced evangelical Christianity and prayed for forgiveness in a three-hour session in May 1990, the Times reported.
Brannon and Hernandez were triumphant. In an interview with the Chicago Tribune in 1991, they lauded Noriega's "generous heart" and his apparent plans to help drug addicts down the road. The ministers also stressed that they weren't seeking attention by working with Noriega.
"We could tell he needed God, that the Lord had chosen him," Hernandez said. "We didn't say, 'he's a very influential man, let's get him.'"
"If somebody told me I could visit Saddam Hussein, I would pay my way to Iraq," he added.
Prosecutors weren't impressed by Noriega's conversion. Diane Cossin, spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office, said at the time that Noriega's religion "is his personal business" and would have no bearing on his trial.
In April 1992, Noriega was sentenced to 40 years in prison on a drug trafficking and conspiracy conviction.
Shortly after, Brannon and Hernandez petitioned the judge in the case to have Noriega baptized. They asked for a portable fiberglass baptistery -- the receptacle used for baptisms -- to be "taken into the courtroom and for Noriega to be immersed in accord with the Holy Scriptures and in obedience to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ." The judge consented, according to the ministry, which supplied the baptistery for his baptism, which took place Oct. 24, 1992.
Brannon and Hernandez died in 2005. An obituary for Hernandez makes no mention of Noriega. But an obituary for Brannon in his hometown newspaper said the minister viewed Noriega's conversion as a "crowning moment."
Religion on 06/03/2017