The purpose of the invasion was to depose the de facto ruler of Panama, General Manuel Noriega, who was wanted by U.S. authorities for racketeering and drug trafficking.

Noriega, who had longstanding ties to United States intelligence agencies, consolidated power to become Panama's de facto dictator in the early 1980s.

In the mid-1980s, relations between Noriega and the U.S. began to deteriorate due to fallout of the murder of Hugo Spadafora and the removal from office of President Nicolas Ardito Barletta.

In 1989, Noriega annulled the results of the Panamanian general elections, which appeared to have been won by opposition candidate Guillermo Endara; President Bush responded by reinforcing the U.S. garrison in the Canal Zone.

On September 7, 1977, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the de facto leader of Panama, General Omar Torrijos, signed the Torrijos–Carter Treaties, which set in motion the process of handing over the canal to Panamanian control by 2000.

[13] Noriega had sided with the U.S. rather than the Soviet Union in Central America, notably in sabotaging the forces of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, and the revolutionaries of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) in El Salvador.

In 1986, U.S. President Ronald Reagan opened negotiations with Noriega, requesting that the Panamanian leader step down after his criminal activities were publicly exposed in The New York Times by Seymour Hersh.

As relations continued to deteriorate, Noriega appeared to shift his Cold War allegiance toward the Soviet bloc, soliciting and receiving military aid from Cuba, Nicaragua, and Libya.

[13][22] In October 1989, Noriega foiled another coup attempt by members of the Panama Defense Forces (PDF), led by Major Moisés Giroldi.

[24][25][26] On the night following the war declaration, at approximately 9:00 p.m., four U.S. military personnel were stopped at a roadblock outside PDF headquarters in the El Chorrillo neighborhood of Panama City.

Presidents Oscar Arias and Daniel Oduber of Costa Rica, Carlos Andrés Pérez of Venezuela, Alfonso López Michelsen of Colombia, and Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González all on different occasions met Noriega in secret attempting to convince him to give up power and self-exile himself in Spain, to no avail.

[40] The operation began with an assault of strategic installations, such as the civilian Punta Paitilla Airport in Panama City and a PDF garrison and airfield at Rio Hato, where Noriega also maintained a residence.

This position also protected the left flank of the attack on La Comandancia and the securing of the El Chorrillos neighborhood, guarded by Noriega's Dignity Battalions.

Military police units from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, deployed via strategic airlift into Howard Air Force Base the next morning and secured key government buildings in Panama City.

MPs seized PDF weapons, vehicles and supplies during house-to-house searches in the following days and conducted urban combat operations against snipers and Dignity Battalion holdouts for the following week.

[citation needed] A few hours after the invasion began, Guillermo Endara, who had been the presumed winner of the scheduled presidential election earlier in 1989, was sworn in at Fort Clayton.

Noriega remained at large for several days, but realizing he had few options in the face of a massive manhunt and a $1 million reward for his capture, he obtained refuge in the Apostolic Nunciature of the diplomatic mission of the Holy See in Panama City.

However, the U.S. military's psychological warfare pressure on Noriega was relentless, reportedly with the playing of loud rock-and-roll music day and night in the densely populated area surrounding the Holy See mission.

According to official Pentagon figures, 516 Panamanians were killed during the invasion, including 314 soldiers and 202 civilians;[4] however, an internal U.S. Army memo estimated the number at 1,000.

By themselves, these ratios suggest that the rule of proportionality and the duty to minimize harm to civilians, where doing so would not compromise a legitimate military objective, were not faithfully observed by the invading U.S. forces.

[4] Civilian fatalities included Kandi Helin and Ray Dragseth, two American schoolteachers working in Panama for the Department of Defense Schools.

Juan Antonio Rodriguez Moreno, a Spanish freelance press photographer on assignment for El País, was killed outside of the Marriott Caesar Park Hotel in Panama City early on December 21.

Outside of the battlefield, female journalists and reporters expansively covered the invasion, providing critical information to the public and bringing international attention to the events unfolding in Panama.

Some countries charged that the U.S. had committed an act of aggression by invading Panama and was trying to conceal a new manifestation of its interventionist policy of force in Central America.

[77] According to a CBS News poll, 92% of Panamanian adults supported the invasion, and 76% wished that U.S. forces had invaded in October during the second attempted coup.

[82] The Washington Post disclosed several rulings of the Office of Legal Counsel, issued shortly before the invasion, regarding the U.S. forces being charged with making an arrest abroad.

On July 19, 1990, a group of sixty companies with operations in Panama filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government in Federal District Court in New York City, alleging that the invasion was "done in a tortuous, careless and negligent manner with disregard for the property of innocent Panamanian residents".

Hundreds of Panamanians marked the day with a "black march" through the streets of Panama City to denounce the invasion and Endara's economic policies.

Since Noriega's ousting, Panama has had four presidential elections, with candidates from opposing parties succeeding each other in the Palacio de las Garzas.

The commission's goal would be to identify victims so that reparations could be paid to their families, as well as to establish public monuments and school curriculums to honor history and reclaim Panama's collective memory.