Manuel Noriega, the former dictator of Panama, who has died aged 83, appeared indomitable at the head of one of the world’s most corrupt regimes until he was toppled by the Americans in 1989; he spent most of the rest of his life behind bars.

During his career as security chief, superpower double agent, dictator, drug runner and billionaire, the Panamanian general – nicknamed “Pineapple Face” (Cara de piña) because of his acne-pitted complexion – showed a terrifying degree of self-reliance, ruthlessness and cunning.

Despite being for many years in the pay of the CIA he proved maniacally contemptuous of “the colossus of the North” and was the bane of successive American administrations until finally, in 1992, he was found guilty of drug trafficking and racketeering charges by grand juries in Florida and sentenced to 40 years in prison, subsequently reduced to 30 and then to 17 for good behaviour.

Until that point, however, from the moment he took control of the armed forces in Panama in 1983, Noriega had fended off all attempts to unseat him, either diplomatically or by force. After the shamelessly fraudulent elections of 1984, the brutal murder of the opposition leader Hugo Spadafora in 1985 and the farcical elections of May 1989 – in which Noriega voided the result, claiming US meddling – there seemed scant hope of the Central American republic of two million citizens ever returning to the control of a lawfully elected civilian government.

Although Noriega led the life of a rich man, he worked hard to develop a populist image modelled on his patron and predecessor Omar Torrijos. He spoke often of his humble origins and characterised his domestic opponents as rich and white. “The humble, the poor and the blacks, they are the utmost authority of the people,” he was apt to declaim at the most inappropriate moments.

Manuel Antonio Noriega Morena was born in one of the barrios of Panama City on February 11 1934 into a family of Colombian origin. The republic was then an American satellite, created to ensure that the Panama Canal should be in friendly hands.

Noriega attended the Instituto Nacional and the Military School de Chorrillos in Lima, Peru, where he won a scholarship and was a high flier. Early hopes of becoming a doctor were dashed by poverty and he embarked on a military career.

On his return to Panama he was commissioned into the National Guard and stationed at Colón, where he became a favourite of Captain Omar Torrijos. In 1968 he joined the rebel “Combo” forces who ousted the government of Arnulfo Arias, establishing the era of military rule that would survive for more than two decades.

After the coup Torrijos seized power, and his close bond with Noriega was sealed in 1969 when three Right-wing colonels staged a counter coup while he was in Mexico. Torrijos took the risk of flying at night into Chiriquí province, where Noriega, who was now a major commanding the National Guard, was waiting for him, having illuminated the rudimentary airstrip by lining up cars and trucks beside the runway and ordering the headlights to be switched on. Torrijos landed without incident and headed east with Noriega’s troops to secure the capital.

For his services and those of his faithful soldiers Noriega was given a promotion to lieutenant-colonel and appointed chief of military intelligence. He was now Torrijos’s chief ally, and an informant for the CIA. As the feared head of Panama’s G-2 intelligence agency he was responsible for surveillance and the bullying of critics of the government. “I know that I have an image problem,” Noriega told the Washington Post in 1978.

Noriega’s usefulness to the Nixon administration was demonstrated in 1971 when he was sent to Havana to arrange the release of the American crews of two Miami-based freighters, which Cuba had seized. But he was also a liability, and plans were discussed to assassinate him, though they were eventually vetoed by President Nixon.

In 1981 Torrijos was killed in a mysterious aeroplane crash; it was later blamed on a bomb organised by Noriega. A lengthy power struggle ensued, and in March 1982 Ruben Dario Paredes del Rio was installed as the new military ruler of Panama, with Colonel Noriega as his chief of staff.

In August 1983 Noriega succeeded Paredes, promoting himself to general. He concentrated power in his hands, combining the National Guard with the Navy and Air Force to form the Panamanian Defence Forces, numbering about 15,000 men.

In 1984 Nicolás Ardito Barletta, Noriega’s favoured candidate in the first presidential elections since the 1968 coup, won by a narrow margin over former President Arias, though it became clear that the military had interfered with the ballots. The opposition nicknamed the new president “Fraudito”.

Noriega wanted Barletta because as an economist and trusted planning minister in the Torrijos regime he seemed equipped to tackle Panama’s vast national debt and modernise the bloated bureaucracy, to satisfy the International Monetary Fund’s demands for a loan renegotiation.

Barletta’s genuine efforts to reform the economy proved immensely unpopular, however, not least with Noriega himself, and in September 1985 he was compelled to resign and replaced by a puppet president, Eric Arturo Delvalle. Barletta’s prospects had not been helped by the fact that he was recommending a commission to look into the appalling murder of Dr Hugo Spadafora, a physician and opponent of the government whose headless body had been found earlier in the month in a US post office bag. A post mortem revealed that he had been horribly tortured.

Spadafora had been critical of Noriega for some time, but his claims that the general was protecting drug traffickers proved too close to the knuckle. He was last seen alive being bundled off a bus by G-2 agents. A few days earlier, Noriega had been heard telling his henchmen: “I want that guy’s head.”

The removal of Barletta prompted a deterioration in relations between Panama and the US. But the Americans, consumed by their battle against the Sandinistas and communist insurgents elsewhere, were still not in the mood to break decisively with Noriega, or to address his enabling of Colombian drug traffickers. “Noriega is bad,” said an unnamed US official, “but he keeps the lid on.”

To complicate matters, Noriega became entangled in what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. In 1986 Oliver North, a member of the US National Security Council, met the general to discuss how, if the ban on arms sales to the Panama could be lifted, the general might sabotage the Sandinista leadership in Nicaragua. North apparently proposed paying Noriega a million dollars for his help – from funds raised from the sale of US arms to Iran.

But the tide began to turn against Noriega. In 1987 his former second-in-command, Colonel Roberto Diaz Herrera, gave an interview accusing him of involvement in drug-running, money-laundering and the murders of Herrera’s friend Spadafora as well as Torrijos. The accusations triggered violent demonstrations in Panama and calls for Noriega’s resignation. Soon after Diaz Herrara’s interview his house was raided by Panama’s riot troops, “the Dobermans”, and he was arrested. He recanted, confessed to “inciting anti-government violence” and was eventually exiled.

Now the US Senate called for Noriega to step down. A pro-democracy group of business and civic leaders known as the National Civil Crusade started gathering in Panama City with a plan to use non-violent resistance to overthrow the regime, but their demonstrations were crushed by tear-gas-wielding troops.

Noriega declared a state of emergency: he suspended the constitution, banned public rallies, closed down television stations and newspapers and detained or exiled opposition leaders.

The American government was finally grasping that, as Everett Briggs, the US ambassador to Panama in the 1980s, said many years later, “General Noriega was a monster and a crook.” It was also becoming embarrassingly clear that the Panamanian strongman had spilt as many secrets to communist governments as he had gleaned for his CIA handlers.

For his part Noriega blamed conservatives in America for the hostility towards him, claiming that they were looking for an excuse to abrogate the 1977 treaty by which America pledged to return the Panama Canal to Panama after 1999.

Attacks by Noriega-supporting mobs on the American Embassy marked a low point. The state of emergency encouraged worried foreign investors to withdraw billions of dollars from Panamanian banks, and when the US froze Panamanian assets held in American banks, Noriega, while defiantly adopting the slogan “Not one step back”, was no longer able to pay state employees, which stoked popular discontent.

In February 1988 the American Department of Justice indicted him for violating racketeering and drug laws by protecting international narcotics traffickers in return for millions of dollars of bribes, allowing the laundering of drug profits by Panamanian banks, and turning Panama into a centre for cocaine smuggling.

Hamstrung by the limits of the extradition treaties, the Reagan administration’s State Department tried to persuade Noriega to surrender and accept a plea. Yet he seemed impossible to dislodge. The failure of President George HW Bush to intervene in the abortive coup of October 3 1989 brought scorn on his head and no doubt intensified his desire to be rid of Noriega.

The killing of an American marine officer by Panamanian soldiers further enraged the Americans and at 1am on December 20 Bush launched Operation Just Cause, the invasion of Panama.

Noriega claimed sanctuary in the papal nunciature in Panama City, and to force him to surrender the American military blasted rock and roll hits from Guns N’ Roses and Elvis Presley at deafening volume through loudspeakers placed around the building. In January, in Operation Nifty Package, he was captured and flown straight to the US in a military aircraft.

He was put on trial in Miami and found guilty on all eight counts. It was revealed that he had been a highly paid asset of the CIA for many years but the judge ruled that he could not discuss exactly what he had done for the United States as part of his defence.

While in prison he was convicted in Panama of Dr Spadafora’s murder, and the French government requested his extradition for money laundering, by buying flats in Paris. After his release in 2007 he was held in the infamous French jail, La Santé, from 2010 to 2011, before being extradited back to Panama to serve time there. On March 7 2017 he was released from prison to undergo surgery for a benign brain tumour.

Noriega was 5ft 5in in height and, as a result of his heavy use of drugs, increasingly wheezy as he aged. His numerous affairs, with both men and women, were notorious. It was said that when his wife, Felicidad Sieiro de Noriega, once attacked one of his girl-friends the general responded by sending the injured woman to Europe for plastic surgery.

He had a large collection of portraits of children, modern and historical Panamanian art, and porcelain toads (the Spanish for toad is sapo, Panamanian slang for informer). He was a vegetarian, explaining: “I don’t believe men should eat the flesh of other animals.”

At the height of his power he had several meetings with the ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn, who married President Arias’s nephew. She agreed to help the Panama national ballet and said: “He always seemed to me to be a very clever man”; although he committed a “chain reaction of what I would call mistakes”.

According to Ambassador Briggs, when American troops broke into Noriega’s house in Panama City they found a freezer stuffed with voodoo candles, each labelled with one of his enemies’ names, including that of the ambassador.

In 1974 Noriega converted to Buddhism, but in 1991 an American newspaper reported that he had become a born-again Christian during his incarceration.

He had three daughters by his wife and a son by a mistress.

Manuel Noriega, born February 11 1934, died May 29 2017

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