A Taste of Prison

Jails were filled to overflowing with political enemies when Marcos Perez Jimenez was boss in Venezuela. Last week the chubby little (5 ft. 4 in.) dictator, who has been living a life of ease in Miami Beach since his overthrow in 1958, got a faint idea of how it feels to be on the inside looking out. He was behind bars in Cell No. 505 in Miami's Dade County jail, though Florida justice does not include the exercises in torture that Jimenez' prisons did.

Perez Jimenez made one bad slip on the January day he fled Venezuela one jump ahead of the howling mobs. He forgot to take along a suitcase he had packed for the getaway. Beneath the socks, shirts and underwear were bundles of papers--stock certificates, bank-deposit slips, property deeds, and memoranda of commissions squeezed over the years from companies doing business with his government.

In exile, Perez Jimenez lived in style. He bought a $400,000 Miami Beach mansion with swimming pool, cabanas and royal palms. He did a bit of loafing, broke out his bow and arrow for archery practice, gave a few parties, junketed off to Manhattan. Eventually, Venezuela asked the U.S. to arrest and extradite him on charges of complicity in murder--and embezzlement, based on evidence found in the suitcase. He got out on bail while his lawyers fought his extradition all the way up to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Last week, when that court turned him down, Perez Jimenez had his bail canceled by the district judge in Florida.

He still has the U.S. Supreme Court to appeal his case to, but is not enjoying his new American domicile. Languishing in an 8-ft. by 12-ft. cell with only an iron cot and no chair, Perez Jimenez complained: "This is in violation of the traditional humanitarian right of political asylum. I'm treated worse than a common criminal--even the lowest of criminals are freed under bond in this country." He might find it worse at home, although Latin American governments have a tradition of not being too hard on their predecessors in office.

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