Panama’s Noriega in prison 25 years post-invasion

PANAMA CITY — Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is nearly forgotten, languishing in a steamy jungle prison near the interoceanic canal while the country enjoys democracy and economic prosperity a quarter-century after the strongman was toppled by a U.S. military invasion.

The U.S. intervention known as Just Cause began 25 years ago on Saturday, on Dec. 20, 1989, and ended with Noriega’s surrender to American drug agents on Jan. 3.

Much has changed in Panama since then, with six consecutive presidents democrati- cally elected in the nation of 3.5 million people. Its economy has become one of the fastest growing in Latin America, rising at an average rate of about 8 percent annually amid a multi-million-dollar real estate and construction boom. The United States peacefully transferred full control of the canal to Panama in 1999.

On Saturday, President Juan Carlos Varela became the first Panamanian leader to attend a ceremony to remember victims of the invasion. He announced the government would form a commission to consider demands put forth by their families, such as declaring the date a national day of mourning.

“My presence is an effort to unify the country, heal wounds, seek justice,” Varela told reporters after a memorial Mass. “Even though 25 years have passed, it is clear that mourning has not ended due to issues that remain unresolved.”

The invasion killed 314 Panamanian soldiers and 200 civilians, the government says, while the U.S. military reported losing 23 American soldiers. Local human rights organizations estimated that more than 1,000 Panamanians died.

Families of the victims have asked the government to support their call for a formal apology from Washington, to establish a truth commission to confirm the number of dead, and to build a monument to honor the lives lost.

Noriega, now 80, is likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Originally arrested on charges of working with Colombian drug traffickers, he is serving a 20-year maximum term on combined sentences for murder, embezzlement and corruption, and still faces trial for the killing of an opponent and the disappearance of two others.

The former strongman’s attorneys and doctors have tried without success to persuade the courts to let him serve his time at home because of his advanced age and fragile health. Doctors hired by relatives say he has a benign brain tumor and heart trouble and he has been hospitalized several times — for hypertension, flu and bronchitis — since being repatriated from France in December 2011.

Noriega, a one-time CIA asset who controlled Panama from 1983 to 1989, became an embarrassment for the U.S. after he began working with Colombia’s Medellin drug cartel.

In the waning days of the Cold War, Noriega was seen by U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s administration as an ally against the leftist Sandinista government in Nicaragua, but eventually fell out with Washington. Shortly before Christmas 1989, U.S. President George H.W. Bush ordered the invasion to oust Noriega. The dictator holed up in the Vatican Embassy, and U.S. forces blasted it with incessant loud rock music until he surrendered the following month.