Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega dead at 83
Noriega, who took power in Panama in 1983 and was ousted by US forces in 1989, died in Panama City
Manuel Antonio Noriega, who took power in Panama in 1983 and was ousted by US forces in 1989, died late Monday in Panama City, a government official said. He was 83.
Noriega was in a hospital recovering from a brain tumor operation. The announcement was made by government communications secretary Manuel Dominguez.
The US military swept into Panama on December 20, 1989 with the stated aims of upholding human rights, protecting Americans living there, curbing drug trafficking, and to ensure the neutrality of the Panama Canal.
American forces captured dictator Manuel Noriega, who had previously worked with the CIA for decades.
He was taken to the US, tried on drug trafficking and money laundering charges, and imprisoned.
After completing his US sentence in 2007, Noriega was sent to France in 2010 and incarcerated there on another money laundering conviction, and then to Panama a year later, where he remained imprisoned for crimes committed during his rule.
"Pineapple face"
Born to a poor family in Panama City on February 11, 1934, Noriega started his military career at a young age.
Reportedly recruited onto the CIA payroll in 1967, his rise through the ranks began when he took part in a 1968 coup against then-president Arnulfo Arias.
A year later one of the coup's leaders, General Omar Torrijos, 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, giving him de facto power over the country.
Noriega lived a life of luxury with his wife Felicidad and their three daughters Sandra, Lorena and Thays. They lived in a sumptuous estate that included a mini-zoo, a private casino and a ballroom.
The mansion was the scene of extravagant parties, and in the main bedroom there was a giant safe that rumors said contained millions of dollars' worth of various currencies -- a fortune that supposedly vanished when the US troops invaded.
"Pineapple Face" -- as Noriega was known due to his facial acne scars -- played various sides off each other to stay in power while civil wars fueled by US-Soviet Cold War rivalry raged across much of the rest of Central America.
In time Noriega's brutal tactics to stay in power set the foundation for his eventual ouster -- especially his defiance of then US president Ronald Reagan, who wanted him removed from office.
In 1986, a US intelligence leak to The New York Times revealed that Noriega was involved in the torture and decapitation a year earlier of a guerrilla and opposition critic, Hugo Spadafora.
Roberto Diaz Herrera, a colonel who was second-in-charge in the regime, then accused Noriega of electoral fraud, corruption and being behind the plane crash that killed the popular Torrijos.
Those and other accusations triggered public protests and unrest that sharpened Washington's determination to remove him from office.