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Former Panama dictator Manuel Noriega has died at the age of 83 following brain surgery earlier this year, according to the country's current President Juan Carlos Varela.
Key points:
- Noriega ruled Panama from 1983 to 1989, until the US toppled him
- He had spied for the CIA, but also worked with drug traffickers
- After two decades in US and French prisons, he died in a Panama prison
Mr Varela posted on Twitter that the death of Noriega "closes a chapter" in the country's history.
A source close to Noriega's family confirmed the death to AP.
Noriega, who ruled Panama from 1983 to 1989, spied for the Central Intelligence Agency until the United States invaded and toppled his corrupt government, ending a criminal career that saw him working with drug traffickers like Pablo Escobar.
While the former dictator spent the first two decades after his ouster in US and French jails, he spent the final years of his life in a Panamanian prison for murdering political opponents during his 1983-89 regime.
Noriega accused Washington of a "conspiracy" to keep him behind bars, and tied his legal troubles to his refusal to cooperate with a US plan aimed at toppling Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government in the 1980s.
In recent years, Noriega had suffered various ailments, including high blood pressure and bronchitis.
In 2016, doctors detected the rapid growth of a benign brain tumour that had first been spotted four years earlier.
In January this year, a court granted him house arrest to prepare for surgery on the tumour.
'The hemisphere's first narcokleptocracy'
Most Panamanians had gone to bed by the time the announcement was made close to midnight, so local reaction was initially muted.
Panama's streets were calm, without any demonstrations either in favour or against Noriega.
"We Panamanians must remember the [Noriega] era as something that cannot be repeated in Panama," said Aurelio Barria, a former leader of the Cruzada Civilista, a civil society campaign against the dictatorship.
"It was a really painful time for the country because it ended with an invasion."
Born less than a mile from the US-controlled Panama Canal Zone in a tough Panama City neighbourhood, Noriega was raised by a family friend.
A poor but intelligent youth, his options were limited until a half-brother helped him join the military.
Noriega became head of military intelligence under Omar Torrijos — who had seized power in a 1968 coup — and oversaw the army's corrupt off-book deals, and ran the secret police force.
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 nearly 28,000 troops to seize Panama City and capture him in a house-to-house hunt.
With US officials in the know, Noriega formed "the hemisphere's first narcokleptocracy," a US Senate subcommittee report said, calling him "the best example in recent US foreign policy of how a foreign leader is able to manipulate the United States to the detriment of our own interests."
Noriega is survived by his wife, Felicidad, and daughters Lorena, Thays and Sandra.
Reuters/AP
Topics: world-politics, death, panama
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