Pinochet Regime Blamed for Poisoning Former Chilean President
By Laura Millan Lombrana
January 30, 2019, 12:44 PM CST
Augusto Pinochet Source: AFP via Getty Images
Judge rules that Frei Montalva was murdered by poisoning
Former President died in same hospital as poet Pablo Neruda
The highest profile murder yet has been laid at the feet of Chile’s former dictator Augusto Pinochet.
After an 18-year investigation, a judge ruled on Wednesday that ex-President Eduardo Frei Montalva was poisoned during a hospital operation in 1982 by military doctors, and the autopsy subsequently hidden to avoid blame. He is the highest ranking official among the dictatorship’s more than 3,065 dead and disappeared.
Frei was killed because he represented the moderate opposition at a time when the economy had collapsed, unemployment was soaring and people had dared to start protesting again after nine years of dictatorship. As the founder of the Christian Democratic party, Frei couldn’t be dismissed as a left-wing radical dedicated to the violent overthrow of the dictatorship. As such, Pinochet couldn’t afford to be linked to his death.
Read more at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-30/pinochet-regime-blamed-for-poisoning-former-chilean-president?srnd=politics-vp
More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/world/americas/eduardo-frei-murder-conviction-chile.html6 Men Convicted in 1982 Murder of Chilean Leader
By Pascale Bonnefoy
Jan. 30, 2019
SANTIAGO, Chile — A judge convicted six men on Wednesday in the 1982 murder of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva of Chile, then the leader of the moderate opposition against the dictator Augusto Pinochet.
In an 811-page ruling, Judge Alejandro Madrid found that the men — a former security agent, four doctors and Mr. Frei’s driver — conspired to slowly poison Mr. Frei after he had surgery in a private clinic in Santiago, the capital, and then worked to conceal the autopsy report.
Mr. Frei, of the centrist Christian Democratic Party, served as president of Chile from 1964 to 1970. His government began a land reform program and took majority control of the copper industry, then in the hands of foreign corporations.
Read more at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/30/world/americas/eduardo-frei-murder-conviction-chile.html
Wild story, sophisticated way to kill. I hope none of our intelligence agencies were involved.
Chile actually has a good standard of living. I do understand, a substantial number of poor all the same.
This ex-president Montalva apparently was not a leftist-Marxist per the stories, maybe a center politician.
Anytime, we get involved in Latin America, we seem to be on the right side in Venezuela but it's good to be cautious going forward for whatever part of the world, ME, Asia and so on. It's a different era.
Zero Hedge related:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-04/us-meddling-foreign-elections-cia-tradition-1948 (ZH is a bit of a propaganda machine favoring Russia, so read with caution).
The thing is, is a lot of this is not hearsay, we have released previously classified documents a number of times, the sources are our own government disclosing this. Not some journalist's theories.
