![\"General](\"https:\/\/ichef-1.bbci.co.uk\/news\/624\/cpsprodpb\/568C\/production\/_96265122_039780685-1.jpg\")
<\/p>\nGeneral Manuel Antonio Noriega, former military leader of Panama, has died aged 83, officials have announced.<\/p>\n
Noriega recently underwent an operation after suffering a haemorrhage following brain surgery.<\/p>\n
Noriega had been a key US ally but was forcibly removed when American troops invaded in 1989 and was later jailed in the US on drugs and laundering charges.<\/p>\n
He spent the rest of his life in custody, latterly in Panama for murder, corruption and embezzlement.<\/p>\n
But the former leader was released from jail in January to prepare for the operation in early March to remove a brain tumour.<\/p>\n
He underwent further surgery after cerebral bleeding but died late on Monday local time in Panama City’s Santo Tomas hospital, Secretary of State for Communication Manuel Dominguez announced.<\/p>\n
Although he was never elected to office, Noriega became the de facto leader of Panama, serving a six-year tenure as military governor in the 1980s.<\/p>\n
A strong supporter of the United States, he became a key ally in Washington’s attempts to battle the influence of communism in central America.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But the US tired of his increasingly repressive role internally in Panama, and there were indications he was selling his services to other intelligence bodies, not to mention drug-trafficking organisations.<\/p>\n
Noriega was indicted in a US federal court on drug-trafficking charges in 1988 and, after US observers declared he had stolen the 1989 election, President George HW Bush launched an invasion.<\/p>\n
Noriega sought refuge in the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Panama City.<\/p>\n
US troops flushed him out was to play deafening pop and heavy metal music non-stop outside.<\/p>\n
By 3 January 1990, Noriega surrendered and was flown to the US to face drug-trafficking, money-laundering and racketeering charges, serving 17 years in jail there.<\/p>\n
While in jail he was convicted in absentia in France of money-laundering and sentenced to seven years. After the US extradited him to France, a court there approved a request from Panama in December 2010 to send him back home, where he was convicted again.<\/p>\n
A US Senate sub-committee once described Washington’s relationship with Noriega as one of the United States’ most serious foreign policy failures.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
General Manuel Antonio Noriega, former military leader of Panama, has died aged 83, officials have announced. Noriega recently underwent an operation after suffering a haemorrhage following brain surgery. Noriega had been a key US ally but was forcibly removed when American troops invaded in 1989 and was later jailed in the US on drugs and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":323572,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[7556,7557,7558],"class_list":["post-323570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-manuel-noriega","tag-manuel-noriega-dead","tag-panama-military-ruler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=323570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=323570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=323570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=323570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}