Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega should be home for Christmas, and he may not go to prison after his extradition from France “because he is a sick man,” his defence lawyer said yesterday.

“General Noriega should be arriving in our country before Christmas,” Julio Berrios said.

The lawyer said Mr Noriega, who was overthrown in a US invasion in 1989, had suffered two strokes in recent years “which have weakened his physical faculties.”

He could be sent to prison on his arrival, Mr Berrios said. “Or, if his health is very bad he will have to be taken to the hospital. It all depends on the state he is in when he arrives in the country.”

A longtime intelligence chief who became the country’s military ruler in 1983, Mr Noriega spent 21 years in a Miami prison on drug charges after his overthrow, and then was extradited last year to France, where he was sentenced to six years in prison on charges of laundering money for the Medellin drug cartel.

Panama sought his extradition from France to serve three 20-year sentences for the murders of three opponents – Hugo Spadafora, a doctor and former deputy health minister, in 1985; Captain Moises Giroldi in 1989; and union activist Heliodoro Portugal in 1970.