03 June, 2017
In the months that followed, as tensions increased between Panama and the U.S., the Panamanian Defense Forces engaged in a series of hostile actions against U.S. troops and civilians, including the December 16 killing of U.S. Marine Robert Paz at a military roadblock. After the invasion, Noriega, who was once a key source of intel for the United States, was convicted and sentenced to prison - first by the United States, then France and then Panama. "You may think what you like of Noriega, but we can't say he was anything but respectful toward his neighbours".
After returning to Panama on December 11, 2011, he began serving long sentences for murder, embezzlement and corruption in connection with his rule during the 1980s.
In 2010 Noriega was extradited to France, where he was convicted of money laundering, then extradited to Panama the following year in poor health.
Noriega reportedly asked for forgiveness in 2015. He was in intensive care for more than two months after a hemorrhage following an operation to remove a brain tumor.
At the apex of his power he wielded great influence outside the country as well thanks to longstanding relationships with spy agencies around the world, said R.M. Koster, an American novelist and biographer of Noriega who has lived in Panama for decades. But after Torrijos died in a 1981 plane crash and Noriega took control of the country, the new strongman used his power to say no to Yankee requests, and the US turned on him. He oversaw the army's corrupt off-book deals and ran its ruthless secret police force. Moises Giroldi, who was killed after leading a military uprising against Noriega in October 1989.
Once a feared dictator whose political enemies were liable to go falling from helicopters or be found headless in remote jungle clearings, Noriega had been reduced by the hardships of jail and the harsh vicissitudes of time to a palsied old man in the final years before his death.
Using that information, Noriega manipulated both his Panamanian and American bosses to further his own interests.
Writing on Twitter, journalist Jon Lee Anderson said Noriega told him in an interview previous year that he had made a mistake in challenging the United States. Opposition in Panama had also grown, ignited in large measure by the torture and murder in 1985 of Dr. Hugo Spadafora, a longtime critic who had publicly accused Noriega of being in league with Colombian drug cartels. "But who knows what he's giving them on us?" Prior to his imprisonment, the United States was understandably reluctant to relinquish the Panama Canal - a crown jewel of global engineering and commerce - to an indicted dictator.
Following Noriega's ouster Panama underwent huge changes. But once democracy was restored, the United States recommitted to turning the canal over to Panama and returning full sovereignty over the Canal Zone by 2000.
Just eight weeks before Noriega was charged by USA prosecutors, the agency still maintained there was insufficient evidence against him.
He grew more belligerent, however, and by 1989 US patience had run out. The U.S. Congress imposed economic sanctions to increase the pressure.
According to Anderson, Noriega said: "I wouldn't do that again".
Torrijos died in 1981, and as ruler in his own right Noriega hit the headlines as his relations with Washington turned sour, culminating in Washington sending almost 28 000 troops to seize Panama City and capture him in a house-to-house hunt.
To defenders of US policy, the nation's relationship with Noriega was necessarily based on needs of the moment and the acceptance that USA foreign interests had to be protected.
The short-lived, but devastating invasion, which ended on January 31, 1990, was the first major military operation by the USA since the Vietnam war which the Vietnamese won in 1975.
If there's a single historical figure who might serve as an emblem for the awkward moral ambiguities and conflicted political alliances that characterized the waning years of the Cold War, it might well be Manuel Noriega.
"It's not like he was driven to turn himself in because he didn't like rock music", Dinges said. This view was widely derided. "We went through some hard times, and now it's time to move forward".
