We will still have to wait before the Chilean justice system decides on the causes of the death of Pablo Neruda, who died in 1973 a few days after Augusto Pinochet’s military coup. Communist, close to President Salvador Allende, the poet suffered from prostate cancer. For 40 years, the official version claimed that he succumbed to the disease. But in 2011, his driver claimed he had been poisoned. On Wednesday February 15, the judge in charge of the investigation received a new expert report containing crucial information.
With our correspondent in Santiago de Chile, Naila Derroisne
Chilean and international experts were tasked with establishing whether the deadly bacteria found in a molar of Pablo Neruda in 2017 by another group of experts was present in his body before his death or if it infiltrated after his death.
Pablo Neruda’s nephew, Rodolfo Reyes, also a lawyer and who had access to the expertise, said this week that the bacteria was indeed present in the poet’s body at the time of his death and that, therefore, the contamination n could not be done after the death. His family concludes that he was poisoned with a biological weapon.
But this third report will not be made public, or at least not for now. Because now, it is up to Chilean justice to do its job: ” study and revise ” all the expertise carried out in recent years, before deciding on the causes of death.
Paola Plaza is the judge in charge of the investigation. ” The court cannot rely solely on evidence when there is a whole set of antecedents that must be assessed one by one and then as a whole “, she explains.
Due to the age of the facts, the Neruda case is framed by the old Chilean judicial system which keeps the whole procedure secret. This is why no expert has been able to comment publicly on the conclusions of this last expert report.
►Also read Chile: rebound in the investigation into the death of Pablo Neruda (2019)