Noriega’s Wife Charged in Theft of Buttons from Jackets at Store

MIAMI — Just as Manuel Antonio Noriega’s drug trial nears its end, his wife is in legal hot water.

But unlike the deposed Panamanian dictator, Felicidad Noriega is not accused of smuggling millions of dollars in drugs or depositing a fortune in secret foreign bank accounts.

Panama’s former first lady is charged with shoplifting $305 worth of buttons from jackets in the Burdines store at Dadeland Mall.

Metro-Dade police said on Tuesday that Felicidad Noriega, 46, and a friend, Rosa Busto, 50, removed buttons from 10 jackets on display in Burdines Look Shop on Friday. The women dropped the buttons into a bag of merchandise they had purchased, police said.

After passing several cash registers in the store, Noriega and Busto left without paying, police said. They were arrested by store security at about 8:10 p.m.

Noriega and Busto, charged with one count of grand theft, spent Friday night in a Dade County jail before being released on $1500 bail each.

Police said the theft caused $1,242.87 in damage to the clothes.

On Tuesday morning, Felicidad Noriega was in federal court at her husband’s trial.

She has been sitting behind the former Panamanian leader, often flanked by the couple’s three daughters.

“There was nothing,” Felicidad Noriega said of the shoplifting arrest. “It’s just rumors.”