Did Pinochet murder poet Pablo Neruda?

This video is about Neruda’s life. Pablo Neruda was the pen name of Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto, who was born in southern Chile in 1904.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Communists call for probe into Neruda death

Wednesday 01 June 2011

by Our Foreign Desk

Chile’s Communist Party demanded a formal investigation today into the death of Pablo Neruda in 1973.

The Nobel prize-winning poet was a Communist Party member and close friends with Salvador Allende, the elected president overthrown by General Augusto Pinochet on September 11 1973.

Mr Neruda died 12 days later, just after publishing a condemnation of the US-backed coup and accusing military chiefs of betraying their country.

Officially Mr Neruda died of prostate cancer. But his driver, Manuel Araya, says that Pinochet‘s agents injected poison into his stomach.

A lawyer for the Communist Party said that Mr Araya was not the only person with doubts over the death.

Other people employed by Mr Neruda have come forward and Mexico’s former ambassador to Chile Gonzalo Martinez Corbala has said that he seemed fine the day before he died.

Communist Party president Guillermo Teillier told the Appellate Court in Santiago that the cause of the poet’s death should be made clear.

He had died in the same clinic where former president Eduardo Frei was allegedly poisoned in 1981.

Mr Teillier pointed out that the deaths of Mr Allende, Mr Frei and former defence minister Jose Toha were also suspicious. Mr Allende’s remains are currently being studied by an international group of forensic experts.

The case will be investigated by Judge Mario Carroza, who is responsible for investigating Mr Allende’s death and those of 725 other suspected victims of the Pinochet dictatorship, which lasted until 1990.

See also here.

El Salvador will not order the arrest or extradition of a group of former soldiers accused of killing six Jesuit priests in 1989, the country’s Supreme Court announced yesterday: here.