Six arrested over murder of former Chilean president

[ck4829]

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."

Family members had suspected Frei was poisoned after being tipped off by former aides to General Pinochet. In his 2002 book, Imperfect Crime, Chilean journalist Jorge Molina profiled Eugenio Barrios, a chemist who worked for the Chilean secret police on a series of radical experiments including the production of anthrax, botulism and the nerve gas sarin. Barrios, who was murdered in Uruguay, is suspected of administering the poison to Frei.

Those arrested included medical personnel and members of the Pinochet secret police known as the Dina.

The doctors were charged as accomplices for their role in conducting an illegal autopsy, removing all organs from the body of Frei and stuffing his corpse with gauze.

The murder of Frei in January 1982 was followed a month later by the assassination of Tucapel Jiménez, a leading union organiser, as the Pinochet regime systematically eliminated leading figures in the democratic opposition.

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

It sounds like Pinochet was working on weapons of mass destruction, I wonder why we didn't liberate the Chileans from this guy.

[tsuki]

1. Because we were supplying the weapons? nt