New Investigation Ordered into Mysterious Death of Chilean Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda

(Patria) - Chile will once again attempt to solve the mystery surrounding the death of poet and Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda, who died in 1973, and who may have been poisoned under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, an appeals court decided today.

"The reopening of the investigation is ordered in order to carry out the procedures" requested by the complainants, which "could contribute to clarifying the facts," the Santiago appeals court stated in its ruling.

The reopening of the investigation was requested by the poet's relatives, including a nephew, as well as the Communist Party, of which Neruda was a member, reports Hina.

The appeals court ruling overturns the decision to close the investigation into the causes of Pablo Neruda's death, which was made in December.

Pablo Neruda died on September 23, 1973, twelve days after Pinochet's coup against socialist President Salvador Allende, a close friend of the poet.

The hypothesis of an assassination emerged in 2011 following the discovery by Manuel Araya, who died in June 2023, then a young activist and Neruda's assistant and driver.

According to this poisoning theory, Neruda died from an injection the day before he was to leave for Mexico, where he planned to go into exile to lead the opposition to Pinochet's regime. Until then, the official version was that the poet died of prostate cancer.

International experts unanimously rejected the official version of the military regime in 2017, but could neither confirm nor dismiss the poisoning theory.

The poet's body was exhumed in April 2013 from a crypt in the Chilean town of Isla Negra, where it had rested since 1992.

The dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet left around 3,200 victims and more than 38,000 tortured, according to official data.