Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, March 21, 1991                   TAG: 9103210195
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: MIAMI                                LENGTH: Short

NORIEGA TURNS TOWARD CHRIST, ATTORNEY SAYS

Evangelists Clift Brannon and Rudy Hernandez have been visiting Noriega at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center outside Miami, where he is awaiting trial in June on drug-trafficking charges, said attorney Frank Rubino.

"It's true - he regularly sees them and received some type of Bible instruction," said Rubino, who spoke to Noriega Tuesday after two co-defendants were convicted in the first jury trial in the drug-smuggling case.

According to an article to be published today in the Florida Baptist Witness, Noriega, nominally a Roman Catholic, has written several letters about his conversion.

"I received Jesus Christ as my savior the 15th of May of 1990 at 11 a.m. in a small room, like unto a cave, in the Metropolitan Correctional Center of Dade County, Fla.," Noriega wrote in Spanish, according to the Baptist publication.

- Associated Press