UpdateFormer Panamanian dictator and convicted drug trafficker Manuel Noriega dead at 83
‘Pineapple Face’ Noriega was a former CIA asset who turned on Washington - then was ousted when US forces invaded in 1989
Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, a onetime US ally and CIA asset who later turned on Washington and was ousted by an American invasion in 1989, died late Monday at age 83.
Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela wrote in his Twitter account that “the death of Manuel A. Noriega closes a chapter in our history.”
Varela added: “His daughters and his relatives deserve to mourn in peace.”
Noriega served a 17-year drug sentence in the United States and was later sent to face charges in France. He spent all but the last few months of his final years in a Panamanian prison for murder of political opponents during his 1983-89 regime.
He accused Washington of a “conspiracy” to keep him behind bars and tied his legal troubles to his refusal to co-operate with a US plan aimed at toppling Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government in the 1980s.
In recent years Noriega suffered various ailments including high blood pressure and bronchitis.