Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Brutal dictator, CIA stooge & drug overlord whose reign ended after a heavy metal music ‘siege‘
HE was a dictator who repaid his US backers with drug trading, money laundering and murder – forcing a President to invade his country.
General Manuel Noriega, famously flushed out of a refuge in Panama City’s Vatican Embassy by US forces blasting him with deafening heavy metal music, has died, aged 83. Noriega, who suffered prostate cancer and several strokes, had spent 17 years in prison after a US trial, before being allowed home. He died on Monday in a Panama City hospital. Announcing Noriega’s death on Twitter early yesterday morning, Panama’s president
I apologise to anyone offended, affected, harmed or humiliated
MANUEL NORIEGA ASKS PANAMA FOR FORGIVENESS
Juan Carlos Varela, wrote: “The death of Manuel A. Noriega closes a chapter in our history; his daughters and his relatives deserve to bury him in peace.” It is a chapter many in Panama and the US would rather forget. Noriega was at one time viewed by the US as an evil necessity in its fight against political instability and the threat of communism in its own back yard. But – after a career as a double-dealing despot who descended into violent crime – he was seen by most as just plain evil. Born in 1934 in Panama City, Noriega was abandoned by his accountant father at the age of five and raised by an aunt. Educated at a Peruvian military college, he later caught the attention of the CIA and became a
paid informant as he rose through the ranks of the Panama National Guard. As he secretly served handlers in Washington, Noriega established himself as a drug lord with sworn enemies of the US. And his grip on Panama tightened. Working alongside Pablo Escobar’s Medellin Cartel in Colombia, Noriega – known as Pineapple Face for his pockmarked complexion – corrupted his own country using some of the biggest banks to launder drug money. By 1983, he had promoted himself to the rank of general and was the de facto ruler of Panama while still on the CIA payroll. The next year, Noriega gave his blessing to the first “free” presidential election in Panama in 16 years. But his brutality was demonstrated shortly after when long-time critic Hugo Spadafora was seized by a death squad and his decapitated and tortured body was found wrapped in a US mail bag. Anti-noriega demonstrations were also stamped on by his paramilitary forces, known as the Dignity Battalions. Eventually, in the face of this brutality and other crimes, Washington’s patience ran low. In 1988, Noriega was indicted in Miami on narcotics trafficking and money-laundering charges. But he held huge protests in Panama against the US. In 1989, after two failed coups against him, Noriega hailed himself “maximum leader,” and the National Assembly declared war on the US. But, after a US marine was shot dead in Panama City, President George H.W. Bush ordered 27,000 troops into the country on December 20. Noriega surrendered on January 3, 1990, at the Vatican’s diplomatic mission after soldiers played deafening heavy metal music non-stop outside. He was flown to jail in Florida and in 1992 he was convicted in Miami on eight counts of drug smuggling and racketeering after a trial during which his involvement with the CIA was revealed. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison but released in 2007. Noriega was sent to France to do more time, for money laundering, before he was extradited to his homeland. In January this year he was transferred to house arrest in Panama to prepare for an operation to remove a brain tumour. But he suffered a brain haemorrhage and had been in intensive care since March 7. Not long before his death Noriega – who is survived by his wife and three daughters, Lorena, Sandra and Thays – sought his nation’s forgiveness. In a statement on Panamanian TV, he said: “I apologise to anyone who feels offended, affected, harmed or humiliated by my actions or those of my superiors while carrying out orders, or those of my subordinates, during the time of my civilian and military government.” Even if they can forgive, his tale of power and brutality won’t be forgotten.