Former Panama strongman Manuel Noriega flew out of France yesterday, headed home to serve more prison time two decades after being ousted in a bloody US invasion.

An Iberia plane carrying the former dictator took off from a Paris airport shortly after 0800 GMT and headed to Madrid, from where the 77-year-old began the final leg of his journey home after a stopover.

“This morning French authorities handed Manuel Noriega over to Panamanian authorities for his extradition to Panama,” Bruno Badre, a spokesman for the French justice ministry, said after the plane took off.

General Noriega, Panama’s military ruler from 1983 to 1989 was guarded by a delegation of six foreign ministry officials, police, doctors and a prosecutor who prepared the transfer in Paris.

Awaiting Gen. Noriega is a 12-square-metre cell with two windows, a bed, a bathroom and a metal door in a prison called El Renacer, which means rebirth in Spanish, on the banks of the Panama Canal northwest of Panama City, the government said. The government released a video of the cell, which has a small table and shelf, after accounts in the local press suggested the former dictator would be enjoying comforts including a double bed, a refrigerator, easy chairs and other furnishings.

“Inmate Noriega will be placed in an individual cell, without luxuries and in similar conditions as the rest of the detainees,” the government said in a statement.

On his arrival in Panama, Gen. Noriega was to be flown to the prison by helicopter under strict security. After serving more than 20 years in prisons in the US and France for drug trafficking and money laundering, Noriega will face three separate sentences of 20 years in Panama for crimes committed under his dictatorship, including the murder of critics.