Former dictator of Panama dies

Panama’s former dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega has died in Panama City, 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 late Monday where he had been recovering from a surgery to remove a brain tumour, and a subsequent operation to clean up cerebral bleeding. He had been serving lengthy prison sentences in Panama for murder and forced disappearances during his dictatorship.

The former dictator 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 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 de facto ruler of a country that hosts the strategic Panama Canal.

“I knew Noriega when I was a lieutenant and he was a second lieutenant,” said a former National Guard general Ruben Dario Paredes, 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,” Paredes told AFP. Noriega was reportedly recruited onto the CIA payroll in 1967. AFP