Military ruler Omar Torrijos pardoned him after he spent five months in jail.
[3] However, in December, only two weeks before the US invasion that would remove Noriega from office, US President George H. W. Bush ignored the nomination and appointed Fernando Manfredo.
[5] Altamirano was the publisher of The Star and Herald of Panama City, which was the oldest English-language newspaper in Latin America until its 1987 closing.
The paper's editor, Altamirano's cousin Jose Gabriel Duque, accused him of closing the paper because it had continued to cover opposition groups after the closing of independent media earlier in the year.
[6] He also was director-publisher of the daily Spanish-language newspaper La Estrella de Panamá, which in 1989 was Panama's largest.