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Chile to exhume ex-leader Allendeâ€Ž

16 April 2011 09:22 (UTC +04:00)

Chilean justice officials Friday ordered that the body of former Chilean president Salvador Allende be exhumed more than 37 years after his death, Calgary Herald reported.

Allende is widely believed to have committed suicide on Sept. 11, 1973, as he resisted the military coup led by general Augusto Pinochet that toppled his leftist government.

While Allendeâ€™s family and human rights organizations believe he committed suicide, they requested the exhumation so that the exact circumstances of his death could be established. The request is to be carried out by May 15, the court said.

â€œJudge Mario Carranza (who is in charge of proceedings) told us this is the right thing,â€ Allendeâ€™s daughter, Chilean Sen. Isabel Allende, said as she made the request.

Socialist Salvador Allende, one of the symbolic figures of the Latin American left, always told those close to him that he would never turn himself in to the authorities in case of a military coup.

â€œFrom here to the cemetery,â€ he warned his ministers in their first Cabinet meeting in 1970, aware that his plans clashed with the wishes of the powerful right.

On the day of the coup, he ordered that women and civilians leave the presidential palace in Santiago and resisted, with rifle in hand. He is believed to have shot himself in the head.

An estimated 3,000 people were killed or disappeared during the 1973-90 dictatorship led by Pinochet, while tens of thousands of others were tortured or forced into exile, according to human rights organizations.

Pinochet died in 2006 without ever having been convicted of a crime.