SANDRA NORIEGA Sieiro, daughter  of Panama’s former dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega, testified under under oath that she would report any violations by her father if he is granted house arrest.

She testified before Third Judicial District Judge Katerini Pitti de Molina at a hearing in Chiriquí that is required for Noriega to be granted house arrest prior to surgery next

month. The surgery is scheduled for February 15.

Noriega must obtain the authorization of the judge

because he is serving a 20­years sentence for the murder of Dr. Hugo Spadafora in September1985.

Sandra Noriega said her father would reside in the home she shares with her two children in San Francisco.

Prosecutor Idalis Olmos did not oppose the request for house arrest, but asked that it be provisional.

Neither Noriega nor the Spadafora family were present at the hearing, but on Friday Noriega faced for the first time, relatives  of  Colonel Moisés Giroldi and those  who died in the episode known as the Albrook massacre, both of which occurred on October 3, 1989.

In court, Noriega, denied involvement in the killings and said they were done by comrades of the victims

A ruling by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court granted Noriega's request for house arrest, but the order had to also be approved by the court's that originally sentenced Noriega.

Noriega has been detained in El Renacer Prison since December 2011, when he was extradited from France, which in turn requested his extradition from the United States, where he had been jailed since the US invasion of Panama in 1989.