Ex-Chilean president was assassinated, forensic expert says
Jack Chang and Helen Hughes
July 9, 2008 5:02 PM
McClatchy Newspapers
(MCT)
VALPARAISO, Chile - A court forensics expert said Wednesday that former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva was assassinated in January 1982 after a simple hernia operation during the rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet.
The statement by Carmen Cerda, the chief of the forensics team investigating the case, confirmed longtime suspicions that Frei Montalva, who was Chile's elected president from 1964 to 1970, had died of foul play at age 71. Medical officials had said that infection related to the surgery was the cause of death.
Cerda, however, said that a combination of toxins, including mustard gas, gradually administered to the former president ultimately killed him. If confirmed, Frei Montalva would be the only Chilean president to be assassinated.
Judge Alejandro Madrid, whom Chile's Supreme Court appointed to investigate Frei Montalva's death, said he hadn't issued a final ruling in the case and called any conclusions ''premature.''
Frei Montalva's son, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, who was Chile's president from 1994 to 2000, said he was certain that his father had been killed, and he demanded that the crime's ''intellectual authors'' be found.
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Separate investigations have showed that the Pinochet regime ordered the assassinations of top officials of previous governments such as former army chief Gen. Carlos Prats, who died in a 1974 car bomb attack in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier, who was killed in a similar 1976 car bomb attack in Washington.
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