ALLEGATIONS OF MURDER
The Communist Party of Chile requested the exhumation of the body of Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, in order to investigate rumors that he may have been poisoned.
The Nobel Prize-winning poet died in Santiago on 23 September 1973, in age 69 years, twelve days after Augusto Pinochet took power in a military coup.
Pablo Neruda's death certificate lists prostate cancer as the cause of death. However, his former driver, Manuel Araya, stated that he was given an injection which caused cardiac arrest. also, reported that the poet a few hours before he died was walking and talking with him normally.
Araya claims agents injected Neruda with poison at the hospital on Pinochet's instructions.
Communist Party lawyer, Eduardo Contreras, stated that there are doubts surrounding the poet's death. Contreras says the hospital where Pablo Neruda was being treated for cancer gave him a painkiller injection and a short time later he died of heart failure.
However, believes he received a lethal injection.
No proof
The request for the exhumation of the poet's body is undertaken by the lawyer Mario Caroza, who will examine the rumor of a possible murder of the poet by the authorities.
However, The Pablo Neruda Foundation said in a statement that there is "absolutely no evidence to suggest that Pablo Neruda died of causes other than cancer.".
Pablo Neruda was a member of the Communist Party of Chile, Member of Parliament and the country's ambassador to France, while the 1971 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature
However, this is not the first request to exhume a leading figure in Chile. In May the authorities of the country proceeded to the exhumation of former president Salvador Allende in an attempt to ascertain, if he committed suicide or was killed by soldiers who stormed the presidential palace during his coup 1973 by Pinochet.
Two months later, experts ruled that the former president took his own life.
also, In Venezuela, the body of Simón Bolívar was exhumed, the examination of which, however, did not lead to certain conclusions.
Source : ethnos.gr