Chile Court Convicts Six in Assassination of Ex-President Frei

By Marion Giraldo

SANTIAGO (Reuters) – A Chilean judge has convicted six individuals for the assassination of former President Eduardo Frei Montalva during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship from 1973 to 1990.

Judge Alejandro Madrid imposed sentences ranging from three to ten years in prison on the ex-president’s doctors, his chauffeur, an army officer, and a former intelligence agent for Frei’s poisoning in a Santiago clinic in 1982.

The judge ruled that agents of Pinochet had drugged Frei while he was recovering from hernia surgery at the clinic. Some of the convicted doctors subsequently attempted to conceal the poisoning, complicating the investigation that followed.

Frei initially backed Pinochet and supported the coup that ousted socialist leader Salvador Allende in 1973. However, he later became disillusioned with the regime and emerged as a leading figure in Chile’s pro-democracy movement, a turn that ultimately led to his murder.

Madrid had initially filed charges against the six men in 2009, but those charges were later dismissed. In 2016, he ordered the exhumation of Frei’s body for a forensic reevaluation, which confirmed the poisoning and bolstered the evidence against the accused.

Pinochet passed away in 2006 without ever facing a full trial for the human rights violations that occurred during his rule, during which over 3,000 people were killed or disappeared, and around 28,000 were tortured.

In recent years, there has been a surge in prosecutions for crimes committed during the dictatorship, as support for Pinochet, once considerable among conservative segments of the population, has diminished.