Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega dead at 83

Noriega’s Panama prison photo taken in Panama City on December 11, 2011. Panama’s Ministry of Government and Justice / Reuters / File

Manuel Antonio Noriega walks with supporters in the Chorrilo neighbourhood of Panama City in May 1989. John Hopper / AP Photo / File

Noriega poses for a photo with Miss USA, Christy Fichtner, left, and Miss Panama, Gilda Garcia Lopez in July 1986. Jim Ellis / AP Photo / File

Noriega pictured arriving at his daughter’s home in Panama City in January 2017. lejandro Bolivar / EPA / File

PANAMA CITY // Panama’s former dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega died in Panama City late on Monday, physically diminished after decades of imprisonment for crimes committed during his 1983-1989 rule.

Noriega, 83, passed away in Panama City’s public Santo Tomas hospital. He had been recovering there since March from surgery to remove a brain tumour and a subsequent operation to clean up cerebral bleeding.

The announcement of his death was made by government communications secretary Manuel Dominguez.

Panama’s president, Juan Carlos Varela, wrote on Twitter that Noriega’s death “closed a chapter in our history.” He said his family “deserved to bury him in peace”.

Noriega had been serving lengthy prison sentences in Panama for murder and forced disappearances during his dictatorship. He had been granted temporary release on February 28 from his prison overlooking the Panama Canal to undergo surgery.

Following years of ill-health that included respiratory problems, prostate cancer and depression, Noriega’s family pleaded with authorities to allow him to serve the rest of his sentence under house arrest.

But the government rejected their appeals and said Noriega would return to prison once he recovered from the brain tumour surgery.

Born in 1934 to a poor family, Noriega entered Panama’s military at a young age and rose through the ranks to become its de facto ruler.

“I knew Noriega when I was a lieutenant and he was a second lieutenant,” said Ruben Dario Paredes, a former National Guard general and a Noriega critic.

He was “very attentive and normal, correct, disciplined, and decent — but when that man reached the rank of general he was definitely someone else. Power disfigured him, corrupted him,” Mr Paredes.

Noriega was reportedly recruited on to the CIA payroll in 1967, the year before he took part in a 1968 coup against then-president Arnulfo Arias. Noriega supported one of the coup leaders, General Omar Torrijos, who promoted him to head the feared G-2 military intelligence unit.

In 1983, two years after Torrijos’ death in a mysterious plane crash, Noriega took charge of the now-defunct National Guard and became Panama’s de facto ruler.

During his ascent and time in power, Noriega juggled working the Americans with relationships with Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, Cuban leader Fidel Castro and other foreign intelligence services.

But his increasingly brutal rule and drug dealings led the United States to seek his removal from power.

Noriega was toppled in a December 1989 US military invasion, and surrendered to US troops in January 1990.

The strongman was flown to the United States where a US court convicted him on drug trafficking and money laundering charges, and sentenced him to prison.

In 2010 Noriega was sent to France, where he was convicted on money laundering charges, then extradited to Panama the following year, where he had been sentenced in absentia to prison for political murders and his role in killing soldiers attempting a coup against him.

Noriega returned home as a wheelchair-bound broken man suffering from a series of ailments.

In 2015 Noriega issued a blanket apology “to anybody who felt offended, affected, prejudiced or humiliated by my actions”.

He likely died without divulging many secrets built up over a lifetime of shady dealings.

* Agence France-Presse