The Supreme Court of Chile acquitted in the last hours the six convicted of the alleged murder of the former president, Eduardo Frei Montalva, in a sentence that considers that his murder during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) cannot be proven.
The highest court questioned the “methodology” of the expertise carried out by Dr. Laura Börgel, in charge of analyzing the mortal remains of the former president, in the study that revealed the presence of thallium, a heavy and extremely toxic metal used in rodenticides and pesticides.
The ruling indicates that with the methodology used it is not possible to reach the conclusion that it ensured a concentration between 11 and 15 micrograms and that two international analyzes from Canada and the United States determined that the concentrations of this element were normal.
The sentence also took into account the analysis carried out by Aurelio Luna, professor of Legal and Forensic Medicine and Occupational Medicine at the University of Murcia, who ruled out the possibility of thallium administration.
Frei Montalva died at the age of 71 at the Santa María Clinic in Santiago on January 22, 1982, during the height of the Pinochet dictatorship.
At first it was officially reported that his death was due to complications in the digestive operation due to a hiatus hernia for which he had arrived at the health center, but already in democracy a judicial investigation pointed to the possibility of poisoning.
In 2019, Judge Alejandro Madrid recognized in the first instance the presence of chemical substances in the body of the former president and classified the crime as simple homicide.
But two years later, a higher court rejected that decision and acquitted the defendants, three of whom died while the case was pending.
Now, the Supreme Court has validated this latest ruling, which indicates that death was caused by a complication of his surgery.
The son of the deceased, the former president of the country, Eduardo Frei Ruiz Tagle, repudiated the decision of the Supreme Court: “I deeply regret the recent ruling that rejects the appeals of Cassation against the sentence that acquitted those convicted in the first instance” .
“I take this ruling as a response to a last resort appeal that establishes a judicial truth, not a material one. This does not mean that the facts investigated did not actually occur and I maintain the deepest conviction that my father’s death was not a natural death. “He added in statements reproduced by the Europa Press news agency.
“Unfortunately, the passage of time, in this case almost 40 years, and the concealment of information that we have had to face throughout this process by the different institutions involved, highlights the difficulty of having the necessary evidence to prove the causes of his death,” he said.
And he added: “In my opinion, this ruling suffers from serious errors. Among them, the conclusions about the procedure or autopsy that was performed on President Frei Montalva. He never had the authorization or knowledge of the family in any way, as it’s hinted at by the ruling. It wasn’t public knowledge either, but it came to light as a result of the investigation we started as a family.”
Source: Ambito
