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