Chile's communists want Neruda's death probed

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

May 31, 2011
Chile's communists want Neruda's death probed

(AP) SANTIAGO, CHILE (AP) — Chile's Communist Party wants a formal investigation into the death of the country's revered poet Pablo Neruda, who officially died of cancer only days after the 1973 coup toppled his close friend, President Salvador Allende.

Several witnesses have raised doubts about his death recently, including Neruda's driver, who says he was poisoned by government agents.

Neruda died at the age of 69 on Sept. 23, 1973, 12 days after the coup. He had just published a withering criticism of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship that eulogized Allende and accused Chile's soldiers of having betrayed their country. He'd won the Nobel Prize for Literature two years earlier, giving him great international prestige.

Neruda died, officially of prostate cancer, in the same clinic where former President Eduardo Frei was allegedly poisoned in 1981 by six people, including several Pinochet agents, who were charged last year in connection with his death.

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/05/31/ap/extras/main20067779.shtml

[Ken Burch]

1. Sounds like there's good reason to investigate this..

Pinochet did have a vested interest in not having Neruda stay alive to write fiery poems of resistance.

[leveymg]

2. I didn't know that Frei had been poisoned. Once you get into the habit of killing the opposition,

it's kinda hard to stop.

That seems to be the way assassins operate around the world, from La Moneda to Sheridan Square, with the same figures with clean hands directing the operations from afar.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Here's more information uncovered in the last couple of years:

In Chile, case resurrects ghosts of bloody Pinochet dictatorship
Judge implicates strongman in 1982 death of ex-president

http://media3.washingtonpost.com.nyud.net:8090/wp-dyn/content/photo/2009/12/08/PH2009120804390.jpg

A judge's report confirmed Eduardo Frei Ruiz
-Tagle's suspicion that his father was killed.
(Roberto Candia/associated Press)

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 9, 2009

It all started nearly three decades ago with anonymous phone calls from someone who wanted to send a warning: Former president Eduardo Frei Montalva, undergoing surgery at the Santa María Clinic here, was being slowly poisoned.

So when Frei died in January 1982, his children did not believe the pathologists who listed the cause as septic shock from stomach hernia surgery. Frei, at 71, was not only robust but also had become the most prominent opponent of Augusto Pinochet's bloody dictatorship.

"That's why we had always doubted and thought that something else had happened," Carmen Frei, one of the former president's seven children, said in an interview Tuesday.

Their suspicions were confirmed Monday in a case that has shocked Chileans. Frei was killed, Judge Alejandro Madrid said, and he blamed figures linked to Pinochet.

More:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/08/AR2009120804389.html

~~~~~
6 Accused in 1982 Poisoning Death of Chilean Leader
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO
Published: December 7, 2009

RIO DE JANEIRO — A judge in Santiago ruled Monday that a former Chilean president, Eduardo Frei Montalva, had been poisoned and charged three people connected with the Pinochet dictatorship with murder in the 28-year-old case.

Alejandro Madrid, a judge with the Court of Appeals, said there was evidence that Mr. Frei, who was president of Chile from 1964 to 1970, was poisoned with low doses of mustard gas and thallium in the months before his death on Jan. 22, 1982.

The poisoning at the Santa María Clinic in Chile’s capital compromised Mr. Frei’s immune system, the indictment said, and made him too weak to survive surgery for a stomach ailment, which the original autopsy had ruled as the cause of death.

The indictment charged six people in connection with the killing. A doctor connected to Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s army, a former intelligence agent under the general and Mr. Frei’s driver were charged with murder. Two doctors who were alleged to have falsified the autopsy report were charged with covering up the killing, and a third was charged as an accomplice.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/08/world/americas/08chile.html

~~~~~
Six arrested over murder of former Chilean president• Eduardo Frei Montalva was poisoned, says judge
• Members of General Pinochet's secret police held

Jonathan Franklin in Santiago guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday 8 December 2009 21.51 GMT

Six men have been arrested in Chile over the murder of the country's former president Eduardo Frei Montalva, whose death in 1982 has been one of the most enduring mysteries of the Pinochet regime.

Three suspects were charged with murder and three others with being accomplices to murder.

Frei Montalva died at the Santa Maria clinic in Santiago, where he was recuperating from a hernia operation. Judge Alejandro Madrid, who investigated the case for seven years, said yesterday that the former Chilean leader was poisoned to death as multiple doses of thallium and mustard gas were secretly mixed with medications and injected into the president's body.

"This was an action by the military intelligence of the dictator , with a clear and precise objective, the elimination of President Frei," said Alvaro Varela, a human rights lawyer working for the Frei family. "Those charged today are not the only ones ... there are more and we are headed in their direction."

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/08/murder-chile-president-frei-montalva

[leveymg]

5. Thanks for that post. I knew about Neruda. We all did. Glad that some still care.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Chile to Investigate Death of Poet Pablo Neruda

Published on Wednesday, June 1, 2011 by The Telegraph/UK
Chile to Investigate Death of Poet Pablo Neruda

Chile's Communist Party wants a formal investigation into the death of the country's revered poet Pablo Neruda, who officially died of cancer only days after the 1973 coup toppled his close friend, President Salvador Allende.
Several witnesses have raised doubts about his death recently, including Neruda's driver, who says he was poisoned by government agents.

Neruda died at the age of 69 on Sept. 23, 1973, 12 days after the coup. He had just published a withering criticism of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship that eulogized Allende and accused Chile's soldiers of having betrayed their country. He'd won the Nobel Prize for Literature two years earlier, giving him great international prestige.

Neruda died, officially of prostate cancer, in the same clinic where former President Eduardo Frei was allegedly poisoned in 1981 by six people, including several Pinochet agents, who were charged last year in connection with his death.

Now Neruda's driver, Manuel Araya, has alleged that Pinochet agents injected deadly poison into Neruda's stomach.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/01-6