SANTIAGO DE CHILE.- The Chilean justice system ordered today -February 20- the reopening of the investigation to clarify the causes of the death of the poet and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda, who is believed to have been poisoned by the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1973.
“The reopening of the summary is ordered in order to carry out the following procedures requested by the complainants, which may contribute to clarifying the facts,” says the ruling released by the Judiciary.
The Court of Appeals thus revoked the order to close the investigation adopted in December by the judge in charge of the case, Paola Plaza, and ordered the investigations to be reopened with new expertise carried out.
The reopening of the investigation was requested by Neruda’s nephews and the Communist Party, where the poet, winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in Literature, was active, who died on September 23, 1973, just 12 days after the coup d’état in Chile.
He was 69 years old and suffered from prostate cancer.
New expertise in the investigation
Among the proceedings ordered by the court is a new calligraphic examination regarding the death certificate that would have been issued by Dr. Vargas Salazar, in which it says that Neruda died as a result of the metastasis caused by the prostate cancer he suffered from.
Additionally, the Court ordered a meta-expertise to be carried out to review and interpret the results of the tests carried out by experts from the Universities of McMaster and Copenhagen, who analyzed remains extracted from the exhumed body of the poet.
In addition, new witnesses and an expert in the study of the bacteria are summoned to testify. botulismwhich is believed to have been inoculated to Neruda.
The judicial investigation into Neruda’s death began after in 2011 his former driver, Manuel Araya, told the press that the poet could have been poisoned by the Pinochet dictatorship, which left more than 3,200 dead and some 38,000 tortured, according to official figures. .
FUENTE: AFP
