Manuel Noriega was a Panamanian military officer who became the country’s de facto ruler in the 1980s, exercising power through the Panamanian Defense Forces while never officially serving as president. His regime, marked by corruption, human rights abuses, and ties to the drug trade, ended after the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989, Operation Just Cause, which led to his capture, extradition to the United States, and subsequent conviction on drug trafficking, racketeering, and money-laundering charges. Noriega’s complex legacy spans Panamanian politics, U.S. foreign policy in Central America, and the broader history of the war on drugs. He died in 2017. If you’d like, I can provide a concise timeline of his rise and fall, or a short bibliography of reliable sources for deeper reading.
