This content was published on February 15, 2023 – 19:21 February 15, 2023 – 19:21
Santiago de Chile, 15 February (EFE).- International experts this Wednesday gave Judge Paola Plaza a report containing crucial information on the death of Chilean Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda, who, according to what his family exclusively told EFE, show this It was “poisoned” twelve days after the 1973 military coup.
The presentation of the report, which was carried out by specialists from McMaster University (Canada) and the University of Copenhagen, took place with great expectations by the coordinator of the expert panel, Gloria Ramírez.
“The doctor entered with the panel report, which consists of a written report from each of the laboratories involved in this investigation, one from Canada and one from Denmark,” the judge confirmed at a press conference.
Plaza explained that the documents delivered this Wednesday, which also include a summary and reports from each of the experts, are the “definitive ones” and that the last delivery, scheduled for March 7, will be cancelled.
“The investigation is in the summary phase and there is not much I can foresee. Now comes a phase of study and verification, not just these reports,” said Plaza, who assured that the information provided was “important evidence”. that it is “the joint analysis of the evidence gathered which leads the court to a decision”.
The poet’s nephew Rodolfo Reyes, who had access to the documents because he was a plaintiff in the case, told EFE on Monday that forensics concluded that the ‘Clostridium botulinum’ found in the writer’s remains “Death” was in his body at the time of the examination and that the body was not contaminated at the burial.
For the family, this is irrefutable proof that Neruda was poisoned at the Santa María Clinic in Santiago on September 23, 1973, twelve days after the coup that overthrew his friend and President Salvador Allende and a day before he went to Mexico went into exile. where he could have become the great opponent of the dictator Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
“We now know that ‘Clostridium botulinum’ should not have been in Neruda’s skeleton. What does that mean? That Neruda was murdered, there was an intervention by state agents in 1973,” Reyes said.
The bacterium was found in a Neruda tooth in 2017 by another panel of experts, who dismissed the dictatorship’s version and dismissed the cause of death as “cachexia” (extreme weakness) caused by advanced prostate cancer, which had afflicted him since 1969.
The “Clostridium botulinum” responsible for botulism is a bacillus commonly found in soil that can cause nervous system problems and even death.
It remains unknown how or who introduced the botulinum toxin into the body of the author of “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair”.
Much of Neruda’s family supports the version of Manuel Araya, his former driver and one of the last people to see him alive.
According to Araya, whose testimony formed the basis of the Communist Party’s complaint and gave rise to the investigation in 2011, the poet was poisoned by an injection in the abdomen by a secret regime agent posing as a doctor.
“We are happy and sad because now we know they killed him. Things used to be assumed, but this investigation has revealed the truth: Neruda was killed,” Reyes concluded Monday. EFE
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