Chile's Pinochet, Dead 3 Months, Is Investigated in Poisoning

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Bloomberg

Chile's Pinochet, Dead 3 Months, Is Investigated in Poisoning

By Matthew Walter

March 27 (Bloomberg) -- Chile's former dictator, Augusto Pinochet, is under investigation again, three and a half months after his death at the age of 91.

The question is whether Pinochet ordered government agents to kill ex-President Eduardo Frei Montalva with mustard gas in 1982.

Scientists hired by a Chilean investigating judge found traces of the poison in Frei Montalva's exhumed remains. The court probe also discovered that minutes after the former president died, doctors without identification tags locked his room, drained fluids from his body and removed most of his organs, Frei family lawyer Alvaro Varela said.
(snip)

``We've entered into the darkest part of the military government -- the production and use of chemical weapons to kill people,'' grandson Ortega Frei said. ``We want to know the truth about what happened.''




Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aLapBtQeboyI&refer=news

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Eduardo Frei Montalva, Augusto Pinochet

[malaise]

1. But, but, but

Pinochet was a wonderful friend of Thatcher, Kissinger et al. :puke:
I don't see how killing Frei was any darker than killing thousands of working class youth.

[Hieronymus]

2. Go after Kissinger and Rumsfeld next.

[Ken Burch]

3. Weird part is, Frei had originally helped organize mainstream support for the coup

And a lot of the people who had backed the coup had done so under the assumption that shortly afterward, Frei, or another moderate like him, would be reinstated as president.

If it turns out to be true, Pinochet's remains should be exhumed and thrown into Santiago Bay.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Interestsing to learn our own FBI denied the poison charge earlier.

From the Santiago Times:

CHILE’S FREI FAMILY TO FILE HOMICIDE LAWSUIT FOR DEATH OF FREI SENIOR

New Report Alleges Mustard Gas Used In Assassination Linked To Augusto Pinochet



There was speculation last August that former dictator
Gen. Augusto Pinochet may have ordered Frei’s assassination.

~snip~
But his family has always suspected that the death was linked Pinochet’s DINA secret police, and various trials of former DINA officials, including the infamous DINA chemist Eugenio Berrios, seemed to support their hypothesis.

The presence of any toxic substance in Frei’s tissue samples was denied by the FBI in 2005. But Frei’s family was not convinced with the findings and criticized the FBI for not disclosing the methodology used in their analysis.

Senate leader Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, who also was president of Chile from 1994-2000, reaffirmed in January his conviction that a third party was involved in his father’s death. He had previously said he was hopeful that 2007 would finally be the year when his father’s murder would be solved.

“We’re surprised because we now know what chemical agent was used to poison my father; we knew that the DINA was manufacturing chemical products of that kind,” said Carmen Frei, daughter of the former president. “We knew that DINA doctors worked in the clinic where my father was operated on, but the Ghent university report comes as a surprise. Actually, we have been waiting to discover what was used to poison him and how it was done and, and now we only need to find out who did it.”

Mustard gas, in its gaseous or liquid forms, damages the respiratory and digestive tracks of humans, kills red cells and leads to infections. The gas was used massively against human beings during WWI.

Frei Ruiz-Ragle, who was unable to hold back tears at Monday’s ceremony, said that his family’s situation was not uncommon in Chile. “We have experienced the same difficulty that all victims of human rights violations experience,” he said, referring to the silence and lack of information that normally surround the thousands of Pinochet regime victims.
(snip/...)

[Demeter]

5. Has It Only Been 3 Months Since Pinochet Escaped?

How time flies when you're having Constitutional crises.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Too bad he couldn't have waited to die in prison!

The appropriate funeral for him would have been for someone to throw his body out of an airplane flying over the Pacific ocean, just the way he had it done to so many of his political prisoners.

[xchrom]

6. hey -- he was the decider. he worked hard. made tough decisions. poisoned people.