Ex-Panama strongman Noriega heads home to prison

By Reuters

PANAMA CITY - Manuel Noriega, Panama's ruthless drug-running military dictator of the 1980s, is to be returned home on Sunday, headed for a jungle prison to serve a 20-year term for the murders of opponents during his rule.

Noriega, now 77, was toppled in a U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989 and has spent the last two decades behind bars, first in Florida and then in France after being convicted for drug trafficking and money laundering during his time in power.
Panama's attorney general and a doctor will be part of the team accompanying Noriega on a commercial flight back to his homeland, expected to leave Paris on Sunday morning.

A physically diminished shadow of the strongman once known for waving a machete while delivering fiery speeches, Noriega's return is unlikely to have a major political impact on a country that has enjoyed an economic boom in recent years.

Widely reviled when he was Panama's de facto leader from 1983 until 1989, his small cadre of remaining supporters has kept a low profile and even bitter opponents dismiss Noriega as part of a distant, shadowy past.

Much of the focus on Noriega will be on whether he sheds any light on the dictatorship's mysteries, including some 100 unsolved killings or disappearances in the period of army rule from 1968 to 1989.

Noriega was convicted in absentia in three homicide cases involving 11 murders, including the 1985 beheading of Hugo Spadafora, a physician who threatened to reveal Noriega's drug ties, and the 1989 execution-style slaying of nine officers who staged a failed coup. Some reports say more than 11 soldiers were killed in the massacre.

Noriega was sentenced to 20 years in each case, and will serve the terms concurrently. A special unit has been prepared for him at a penitentiary near the Panama Canal surrounded by tropical rainforest.

Source:http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/11/9363044-ex-panama-strongman-noriega-heads-home-to-prison

Maybe he became a ruthless drug-running military dictator after refusing  to share  the profit with some western head of states.

Noriega was a CIA asset right up until he decided to take an independent course and start making decisions about his country without first getting clerance from the US govt.

he was also a drug baron and was involved in major drug trafficking activities with the support and assistance of the then president of the US George Bush snr, his subsequent clash with the with George Bush snr resulted in the invasion of panama by US military forces , the destruction of his country and his subsequent capture, extradition and imprisonment in a US maximum security prison for drug trafficking.

Monsters made in the US
The pretext for the US invasion of Panama was to remove its ruler, General Noriega. George Bush labelled Noriega a drug runner and a dictator. Bush knew better than anyone. Noriega had been on the payroll of the US CIA, when it had been run by, George Bush.

Noriega pocketed over $100,000 a year from the CIA for his services to US interests. For years Bush, then the US drugs tsar, protected Noriega from prosecution for drugs running. This was because Noriega used his drug trade to ship arms to the US-backed Contras in Nicaragua. The US hoped Noriega would continue to be its loyal supporter in a strategically vital region, home to the Panama canal. But Noriega's rule faced growing opposition in Panama, and as a result of that pressure he sought to shore up his rule by beginning to raise questions about the US's role in Central America.

That was the signal for the US to use its massive firepower to punish a monster it had created, in a pattern that has been repeated ever since, from Iraq to Yugoslavia and Afghanistan. The US used the invasion of Panama as a testing ground.

Weapons like Stealth bombers, Apache helicopters and laser-guided missiles were unleashed on Panama. A year later they were used in the Gulf War, and now they are being used in Afghanistan.

Former US attorney general Ramsey Clarke admitted, "It was highly probable they used sophisticated weapons merely to test them. Above all there was the use beyond any conceivable necessity of just sheer firepower."

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