Bio Weapon Causes Chilean President's Death?

Fact Or Fiction?



www.guardian.co.uk...

BW Caused Chilean President’s Death, Officials Say

Accusations have emerged connecting former Chilean leader Gen. Augusto Pinochet with the 1982 death of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva, the London Guardian reported today (see GSN, April 19).

Military and civilian officials presented a Chilean court with evidence that a biological agent developed under Pinochet’s regime was used to kill Frei at a hospital as he recovered from a hernia operation.

“At first they did not believe us,” said Eduardo Frei, son of the former president. “We have been convinced that there was intervention by a third party in the death of President Frei.”

The agent was designed within a secret biological weapons program led by Eugenio Berrios, who produced anthrax, botulism and sarin nerve agent for the Pinochet regime, the Guardian reported. According to leaked testimony, Pinochet had Berrios “disappeared” and subsequently murdered, fearing that he would reveal that the dictator had ordered the assassinations of Frei and other opposition members.

The court appears set to formally charge the ailing Pinochet for the murder of Berrios, according to the Guardian (Jonathan Franklin Santiago, The Guardian, May 18).