(Panama City) -- Former Panama strongman Manuel Noriega is dead.
A government official in Panama says the 83-year-old Noriega died late Monday in a Panama City hospital where he was recovering from surgery for a brain tumor.
Noriega took power in 1983 and ran Panama as a military dictator until 1989 when U.S. forces invaded the country and arrested him. He was convicted of drug charges and murder. He spent the last two and-a-half decades in prison, first in Florida, then in France, and finally in Panama from 2011 until his death.