Frei was not the only victim of these activities certainly; but he was the most prominent.

It's worth mentioning as well that Frei was a true reformist and progressive, and that had he been able to run for re-election he would have almost certainly won - thus saving Chile from much of the upheaval they went through with the well-meaning but misguided Allende, and the craven, Nazi-trained Pinochet.

Thank you for posting these news, Judi. It'll be good to see where this goes.

almost from the moment it happened, and widely discussed by ordinary people there.

It would be wonderful if these people finally revealed everything they did, and everyone involved. It's such a dark, vicious crime against someone in his most helpless state.

Just remembered the great Chilean, internationally famous poet, Pablo Neruda, too, believed to have been poisoned.

Was Chilean poet Pablo Neruda poisoned by the Pinochet dictatorship?
AFP APRIL 8, 2013

By Roser Toll
AFP

ISLA NEGRA, Chile – The remains of Chilean Nobel prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda were exhumed Monday to determine if he died of cancer or was poisoned by the Pinochet dictatorship he strongly opposed.

Workers broke open the tomb housing his remains at his last home overlooking the sea at Isla Negra under the supervision of Judge Mario Carroza, lawyers and a dozen forensic experts.

The leftist author, who died 12 days after the 1973 military coup that ousted socialist president Salvador Allende and brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, was long believed to have died of prostate cancer.

But judicial authorities in 2011 opened an investigation into four-decade-old claims by Neruda’s driver that he was poisoned by agents of the Pinochet regime.

More:
http://www.ticotimes.net/2013/04/08/was-chilean-poet-pablo-neruda-poisoned-by-the-pinochet-dictatorship


I never knew anything about Eduardo Frei, and it seems his death didn't warrant any coverage by our corporate "news" media here. Almost everything which really happened during Pinochet's reign of terror never made it to our "news" papers and magazines.

Sure hope they will be able to break through to the real story this time.

Thanks for your comments on Frei. I can see I need to learn much more about him. He sounded very decent.

If so, it suggests that the biological agents may have been furnished to them from the very earliest days of the Pinochet regime, given that Neruda died just days after the coup.

Years later, Pinochet ran a brisk trade in biological/chemical warfare agents - notably some of the ones shipped to Saddam Hussein. There's reason to believe at least some of this was done at the Reagan administration's behest, as it was dirty work they didn't really want their fingerprints on.

Such is the world.

Six arrested over murder of former Chilean president
• Eduardo Frei Montalva was poisoned, says judge
• Members of General Pinochet's secret police held


Jonathan Franklin in Santiago
@FranklinBlog
Tuesday 8 December 2009 16.51 EST


. . .

Frei Montalva died at the Santa Maria clinic in Santiago, where he was recuperating from a hernia operation. Judge Alejandro Madrid, who investigated the case for seven years, said yesterday that the former Chilean leader was poisoned to death as multiple doses of thallium and mustard gas were secretly mixed with medications and injected into the president's body.

"This was an action by the military intelligence of the dictator [Pinochet], with a clear and precise objective, the elimination of President Frei," said Alvaro Varela, a human rights lawyer working for the Frei family. "Those charged today are not the only ones ... there are more and we are headed in their direction."

Family members had suspected Frei was poisoned after being tipped off by former aides to General Pinochet. In his 2002 book, Imperfect Crime, Chilean journalist Jorge Molina profiled Eugenio Barrios, a chemist who worked for the Chilean secret police on a series of radical experiments including the production of anthrax, botulism and the nerve gas sarin. Barrios, who was murdered in Uruguay, is suspected of administering the poison to Frei.

The arrests came ahead of Sunday's presidential election, in which Senator Eduardo Frei, son of the murdered president, is one of the leading candidates. "There is a before and an after because never before has there been [in Chile] an attack taking the life of a president," the senator said yesterday.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/dec/08/murder-chile-president-frei-montalva