This Tuesday, the Court of Appeals of Santiago ordered the reopening of the investigation into the death of the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, which occurred 12 days following the start of the military coup led by Augusto Pinochet in September 1973.
In a unanimous ruling, the first chamber of the appeal court – made up of ministers Maritza Villadangos, Elsa Barrientos and lawyer (i) Jorge Gómez – revoked the appealed resolution considering that the investigation is not exhausted as there are precise procedures that might provide to clarify the facts.
The resolution points out that there are “precise procedures that might contribute to the clarification of the facts and fully comply with the provisions of article 108 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.” Therefore, it revokes the appealed resolution of December 7, 2023 and orders the reopening of the summary.
This, in order to “carry out the proceedings requested by the plaintiffs, nephews of the victim, as well as by the Communist Party.”
The court requested a new handwriting expert opinion regarding the death certificate that would have been issued by Dr. Vargas Salazar.
In addition, they requested to carry out a meta-expertise that allows reviewing and interpreting the results of the expertise carried out by experts from the universities of McMaster and Copenhagen, which should be carried out only by experts proposed by said institutions.
According to the family of the Nobel Prize winner, experts from that university announced a year ago that the bacteria costridium botulinum was in his body at the time of his death. This information was interpreted as irrefutable proof that Neruda was “poisoned” during his stay at the Santa María Clinic, where he was hospitalized.
In any case, the question remains whether the botulinum toxin was introduced into the poet’s body naturally or intentionally, since it is also possible to find it in poorly preserved canned foods.
The court summons the director of the Chilean Documentation project, Peter Kornbluh, to testify “in the terms requested by the complainant”; and the doctor Eduardo Arriagada Rehren “regarding his intelligence work based on costridium botulinum and the identical events for which he was convicted regarding the victim Archivaldo Morales Villanueva.”
Likewise, it orders the Investigative Brigade of Crimes once morest Human Rights to investigate the case to “carry out a police analysis of the entire file”, in order to establish whether there are similarities between the events that gave rise to the case and those that affected to Archivaldo Morales Villanueva.”
In addition to this, they commission the Central Criminalistics Laboratory of the PDI to “carry out an age regression expert opinion on Eduardo Arriagada Rehren at the time of 1973.”
What did the family say?
The poisoning thesis was raised publicly for the first time by the poet’s driver and personal secretary, Manuel Araya, who died in June of last year and one of the last people to see him alive.
According EFEsaid testimony was the “basis of the complaint presented by the Communist Party – supported by part of the family – and which in 2011 gave rise to the investigation that must now be reopened.”
“The truth takes a while to arrive, but it is coming little by little. It is a great achievement in justice that we have been asking for for years for my uncle Pablo,” Rodolfo Reyes, plaintiff and nephew of the poet, told the aforementioned media.
For her part, Elizabeth Flores, the family’s lawyer, assured that the unanimity of the ruling “is a boost for our appeal. We have managed to remove the tombstone that they wanted to put on this investigation. “We have been fighting for 14 years to clarify Neruda’s death.”
Thus, it must be clarified whether the Nobel Prize winner died from the advanced prostate cancer that afflicted him or if he was poisoned.
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