Pablo Neruda: Investigation reopens into mysterious death of poet in Chile – 50 years on

An investigation has been reopened into the mysterious death of a poet in Chile.

Pablo Neruda was a Nobel Prize winner, and complications from prostate cancer were listed on his death certificate when he passed away in 1973.

He died 12 days after a military coup that toppled his close friend President Salvador Allende and put General Augusto Pinochet in power.

For decades, his driver Manuel Araya had argued the poet had been poisoned – and last year, forensic experts uncovered evidence supporting this theory.

Tests carried out in Danish and Canadian labs indicated a “great quantity of Clostridium botulinum” was found in Neruda’s body.

The powerful toxin is incompatible with human life, and can cause paralysis in the nervous system.

Last December, a judge rejected a request by Neruda’s nephew Rodolfo Reyes to reopen the case and look for other causes of death – but at an appeals court on Tuesday, that decision was overturned.

A calligraphic analysis of his death certificate will now be carried out, and evidence will be sought from bacteria experts.

Neruda’s body was exhumed in 2013 for further investigation – and two years later, the Chilean government said it was “highly probable that a third party” was responsible.

He has since been reburied in his favourite home overlooking the Pacific coast.

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Best known for his love poems, Neruda had planned to go into exile after Pinochet’s coup, where he would have been an influential voice against the dictatorship.

A day before he was due to leave, the poet was taken by ambulance to a clinic in Santiago where he had been treated for cancer and other illnesses, and died there.

Suspicions that the dictatorship had a hand in the death remained long after Chile returned to democracy in 1990.