He lived in a bungalow apart from other inmates and had his own television and exercise equipment. He was said to be an avid follower of the news and a voracious reader about politics and current events. After completing his year sentence in , Noriega was extradited to France and received a seven-year sentence for money laundering.
Panama wanted Noriega to return to face in-absentia convictions and two prison terms of 20 years for embezzlement, corruption and murder of opponents, including the military commander Moises Giroldi, who led a failed rebellion on 3 October , and Hugo Spadafora, whose decapitated body was found in a mailbag on the border with Costa Rica in In mid, France approved his extradition to Panama.
Despite amassing great wealth, Noriega had worked hard to cultivate an image of a man of the people. He lived in a modest, two-storey home in an upper-middle-class neighbourhood in Panama City that stood in stark contrast with the opulent mansions customary among Latin American dictators. While resentment lingers over the US invasion, Noriega has so few supporters in modern-day Panama that attempts to auction off his old home attracted no bidders and the government decided to demolish the decaying building.
Late in life, he had zero influence over his country from behind bars. Noriega broke a long silence in June when he made a statement from prison on Panamanian television in which he asked for forgiveness from those harmed by his regime. The Panamanian people have already overcome this period of dictatorship. For the most part, however, Noriega remained silent about the elite military and civilian associates who prospered through the corruption he helped create, and which still plagues the central American nation, a favoured trans-shipment point for drugs and a haven for money laundering.
In the final decade of the cold war, Panama had become a key ally of the United States, a time when the Cuban Revolution appeared to be consolidating and the Sandinistas and other left-wing guerrillas were fighting in Central America.
While supporting the United States in its counter-insurgency operations in the region, Noriega plunged his country into an unprecedented economic, political and social crisis.
Any opposition was ruthlessly stamped out : opposition leader Hugo Spadafora was found decapitated in In , he was accused by a US court of drug trafficking. In December , following rigged elections and a failed coup against Noriega, US President George Bush, himself a former CIA director, gave the order to bomb Panama ahead of an invasion to capture Noriega, who eventually gave himself up on January 3, In , Noriega was tried before a US court and sent to jail for 40 years, later reduced to 30 years.
He was kept in relatively comfortable conditions, enjoying privileges denied most prisoners. In April he was released and extradited to France, where he was found guilty of money laundering. A year later, he was extradited to Panama, where he had been found guilty in absentia of involvement in the murder of Spadafora and given a year sentence. Since March, Noriega had been in an intensive care unit after undergoing two operations in less than eight hours and then suffering a brain hemorrhage.
Noriega supported one of the coup leaders, General Omar Torrijos, who promoted him to head the feared G-2 military intelligence unit. In , two years after Torrijos' death in a mysterious plane crash, Noriega — nicknamed "pineapple face" for his pock-marked visage — took charge of the now-defunct National Guard and became Panama's de facto ruler. During his ascent and time in power Noriega juggled work for the CIA along with relationships with Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, Cuba's Fidel Castro and other foreign intelligence services.
But his increasingly brutal rule and his close ties with the drug trade led the United States to seek his ouster. In his final years in office Noriega held rousing anti-American rallies, often wielding a machete, as he simultaneously cracked down on opposition to his rule. He and surrendered to US troops in January The former strongman was flown to the United States where a US court convicted him on drug trafficking and money laundering charges, and sentenced him to prison.
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