PARIS, (Reuters) – Former Panamanian dictator Manuel  Noriega was sentenced to seven years’ jail in France yesterday for laundering millions of euros into French bank  accounts and properties in the 1980s.

The 76-year-old former general arrived in April to be  retried in a Paris court after being extradited from the United  States, where he had been in prison for drug trafficking, money  laundering and racketeering.

He was convicted in France in absentia in 1999 of laundering  money from Colombian drug cartels.