Noriega's New Testament came from the Rev. Clift Brannon, an evangelical minister from Longview, Tex., 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 purportedly consummated by his baptism in a portable fiberglass tub in the atrium of a federal courthouse, surrounded by a dozen guards.
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