Manuel Antonio Noriega, the brash former dictator of Panama and sometime ally of the United States, whose ties to drug trafficking led to his ouster in 1989, in what was then the largest American military action since the Vietnam War, has died, aged 83.
President Juan Carlos Varela of Panama announced Noriega’s death on Twitter, early Tuesday morning.
Varela’s post read: “The death of Manuel A. Noriega closes a chapter in our history; his daughters and his relatives deserve to bury him in peace.”
Noriega died around 11pm, on Monday, at Santo Tomás Hospital in Panama City, a hospital employee confirmed. An official cause of death was not immediately available.
Noriega had been in intensive care since March 7, after complications developed from surgery to remove what his lawyer described as a benign brain tumor.
His daughters told reporters at the hospital, in March, that he had had a brain hemorrhage after the procedure. He had been granted house arrest, in January, to prepare for the operation.
His medical problems came on the heels of a legal odyssey that had begun with the invasion and led to prison terms in the United States, France and finally Panama. While imprisoned abroad he suffered strokes, hypertension and other ailments, his lawyers said.
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.
It was an inglorious homecoming for a man who had been known for brandishing a machete, while making defiant nationalist speeches and living a lavish, libertine life off drug-trade riches, complete with luxurious mansions, cocaine-fueled parties and voluminous collections of antique guns.
Noriega, who became the de facto leader of the country by promoting himself to full general of the armed forces in 1983, had a decades-long, head-spinning relationship with the United States, shifting from cooperative ally and informant for American drug and intelligence agencies to shady adversary, selling secrets to political enemies of the United States in the Western Hemisphere and tipping off drug cartels.
Whose side he was on was often hard to tell
In the 1990 book, “In the Time of the Tyrants,” a chronicle of the Noriega years, the journalists, Richard M. Koster and Guillermo Sánchez Borbón, gave a startling example of Noriega’s double-dealing.
While providing secrets about Cuba to the United States, they wrote, Noriega sold Fidel Castro thousands of Panamanian passports, at $5,000 each, for use by Cuban secret agents and possibly agents of other Soviet bloc nations.
The authors estimated that his illicit gains came to at least $772 million. (The White House put his personal fortune at $200 million to $300 million in the months before his ouster.)
“He craved power and became a tyrant,” Koster and Sánchez wrote in laying out Noriega’s ultimate undoing. “He craved wealth and became a criminal. And the careers came in conflict.”
By 1989 American patience had run out. Lawmakers in Washington began asking more questions about his ties to drug traffickers. 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.
In 1988, Noriega was indicted in the U.S. on federal narcotics-trafficking and money-laundering charges. He was accused of turning Panama into a shipping platform for South American cocaine destined for the United States, and allowing drug proceeds to be hidden in Panamanian banks
There was a failed coup in 1988 and the following year, Noriega annulled the results of Panama’s presidential election, ratcheting up pressure on the United States to take action. After another failed coup, in 1989, he anointed himself “maximum leader,” and the National Assembly declared war on the United States.
Then, on December 16, 1989, Panamanian troops shot and killed an unarmed American soldier in Panama City, wounded another and arrested and beat a third soldier, whose wife they threatened with sexual assault.
“That was enough,” President George Bush said in announcing the invasion, which included more than 27,000 troops.
A White House statement as the invasion got underway said the United States had acted “to protect American lives, restore the democratic process, preserve the integrity of the Panama Canal treaties and apprehend Manuel Noriega.”
Political commentators at the time assigned other motives, including a way for Bush to shake off perceptions of weakness; his poll numbers rose significantly after the invasion.
Panamanian forces were quickly overwhelmed as Mr. Noriega escaped into hiding, surfacing days later, on December 24, at the Vatican Embassy in Panama City.
Twenty-three American service members were killed and more than 300 wounded in the invasion; casualties among Panamanians have been disputed, with the Panamanian government at the time estimating several hundred soldiers and civilians died, while some human rights groups insist the toll was much higher.
American troops descended on the embassy, and a standoff followed. He surrendered on January 3, 1990, and was flown to jail in Florida, leaving behind a new president, sworn in on an American military base and a new era for Panama.
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