The decision by the minister of the Santiago Court of Appeals, Alejandro Madrid Croharé, to prosecute six individuals for the murder of former President of the Republic Eduardo Frei Montalva in January 1982, while he was recovering from a second surgical procedure at the Clínica Santa María, reopened the door to the horrific crimes committed by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

Judge Madrid accused four doctors, the former president's driver, and an agent of the dictatorship's intelligence services—DINA, DINE, and CNI—as authors, accomplices, and accessories to the conspiracy to eliminate Frei by poisoning him with repeated doses of mustard gas and thallium.

The magistrate concluded that the former head of state, who at the time of the murder was leading the opposition to the dictatorship, was inoculated with these pathogenic elements, bypassing the controls established by the clinic, the family, and friends of the former president who attempted to protect him.

Detained as authors of the homicide were Dr. Patricio Silva Garín, a retired Army Health colonel and current head of the Comptroller's Department of the Military Hospital; Luis Alberto Becerra Arancibia, Frei's former driver; and Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, a former agent also accused of the murder of chemist Eugenio Berríos, who was killed in Uruguay.

Becerra was an informant for Lillo, the agent whom DINE had assigned to spy on the former president's movements.

Dr. Pedro Samuel Valdivia Soto, a former DINA doctor at the Clínica Santa María, was prosecuted as an accomplice; the physicians Helmar Rosenberg and Sergio González, pathologists at the Pontificia Universidad Católica who performed the autopsy on the former president, were charged as accessories.

A key investigative step was carried out by Judge Alejandro Madrid on November 28. At the Clínica Santa María, he reconstructed the moments prior to the death of Frei Montalva on January 22, 1982, and the mysterious autopsy performed in the same room where he died, the results of which remained hidden for more than twenty years in the Department of Pathological Anatomy of the Faculty of Medicine at the Pontificia Universidad Católica.

Various forensic examinations of Frei's remains, exhumed at the General Cemetery, confirmed that he had been poisoned with thallium and mustard gas.

The Enemy Within

The opportune moment for the crime, according to the judicial investigation, was facilitated by the driver Luis Alberto Becerra for agent Raúl Lillo, a member of a DINE brigade that wiretapped Frei Montalva's phones and maintained strict control over all his movements.

Judge Madrid revealed that, in addition to the aforementioned toxic substances, there was “the application of an unauthorized pharmacological product called Transfer Factor and the occurrence of various anomalous situations that could be disguised as oversights or negligence, which gradually deteriorated his immune system and facilitated the appearance of opportunistic bacteria such as those called bruteo pyulgalis and candida altas.”

These “turned out to be the final cause of his death and gave the appearance that his passing occurred due to complications derived from the surgical interventions to which he was subjected, making the intervention of third parties in his death imperceptible,” the magistrate's resolution states.

Frei Montalva entered the Clínica Santa María on November 18, 1981, for surgery on an esophageal hernia. Reflux of stomach acids did not allow him to lead a normal life. He had to follow a diet, sleep semi-upright, and consume antacids.

After consulting about the risks of an intervention, he decided to have the surgery. His primary physicians, Alejandro Goic and Patricio Silva Garín, told him it was not necessary to go abroad. The surgery was performed by Dr.

Augusto Larraín Orrego, one of the best specialists in the country. The recovery was normal, and he was discharged after a few days. But ten days later, he began to feel ill; he suffered from persistent constipation.

Goic and Silva concluded that he had an intestinal obstruction and that he needed to be operated on again. They did so on December 6, 1981. Silva operated with Goic present. It seemed like a simple procedure, but they found large adhesions and it was necessary to cut a piece of the intestine.

Drama at the Clínica Santa María

The greatest danger was that microbes from the intestinal tract would pass into the peritoneal cavity and trigger an infection. The medical team performed a thorough cleaning and closed the wound. The post-operative period seemed favorable.

Two days later, the nurse María Victoria Larraechea, sister of Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle's wife, and the doctor Juan Luis González visited Frei Montalva and found him with an open catheter, bleeding profusely. His wound was infected. He presented with acute peritonitis, acute respiratory and renal failure, and aggressive diarrhea that dehydrated him.

Doctors at the clinic mentioned in the judicial proceedings that Dr. Pedro Valdivia was present at various times in the former president's room, a situation the aforementioned doctor could never explain, having claimed he was on vacation during those days.

Valdivia is also being prosecuted by Judge Madrid for the crime of Corporal Manuel Leyton, murdered with sarin gas in March 1977 at the DINA's Clínica London, where Valdivia provided services.

The Frei family lawyer, Alvaro Varela, has stated that at some point, the DINA chemist Eugenio Berríos entered Frei Montalva's room, likely the material author of the inoculation of poison into the patient.

Dr. Goic received an urgent call from the clinic. Frei's blood pressure had dropped to near zero and his fever was spiking: he was suffering from septic shock caused by an infection.

Dr. Sergio Valdés, an infection specialist, was called immediately, and the patient was given antibiotics and connected to a mechanical ventilator. As he did not respond, a third intervention was chosen on Tuesday, December 8, to perform a complete surgical cleaning.

Upon leaving the operating room, the patient responded well: his temperature decreased and his blood pressure stabilized. However, in the following hours, he presented new complications. The doctors opted to subject him to hemodialysis to alleviate the functioning of his kidneys, which were severely complicated by the excess of antibiotics.

Frei continued with drains and remained connected to mechanical ventilation.

White-Coated Assassins

On December 17, he was subjected to a fourth operation to clean the peritoneal cavity, which was invaded by purulent substances produced by an infection that was becoming uncontrollable. A select group of doctors gathered at the clinic—Drs.

Vicente Contreras, Juan Luis González, Gonzalo Sepúlveda, Ramón Valdivieso, Juan Pablo Beca, Mauricio Parada, Carlos Zabala, and Juan Reyes—to decide the course of action.

Someone close to the family received a phone call claiming that a paramedic with the surname González was poisoning the former president. But there was no one with that surname, and today it is presumed that it could have been the false identity of the chemist Berríos.

Medical efforts were futile. Frei Montalva suffered progressive failures that culminated in his death at 17:00 on Friday, January 22, 1982, five days after turning 71. Minutes after his passing, the pathologists from the Pontificia Universidad Católica, Helmar Rosenberg Gómez and Sergio González Bombardiere, and the assistant Humberto Gallardo arrived at the Clínica Santa María to embalm the body and perform an autopsy.

The team had been sent by Dr. Hernán Barahona, apparently at the request of the Frei family doctors, Patricio Rojas and Patricio Silva. Rosenberg assured Judge Madrid that they took samples of Frei's liver, kidneys, and lungs, a task they concluded around 21:00.

Later, at the UC Clinical Hospital, they photographed the viscera and prepared samples to subject them later to electron microscopy. He added that, in mid-March 1982, after concluding the laboratory tests, he wrote a handwritten protocol that he delivered to Dr. Hernán Barahona. Later, he met with Rojas and Silva to inform them of the gathered findings, without them requesting further analysis.

Frei's autopsy remained lost for almost 20 years, until it was found in January 2003 in a UC archive, labeled as "NN."

Judge Madrid concluded that the doctors Rosenberg and González were key in the cover-up of the homicide, after destroying the organs they extracted from the body during the autopsy.

Judge Alejandro Madrid points an accusing finger: “the lack of protection of the former president's security by the governmental and police authority,” which allowed the military regime to control his activities, and the “infiltration into his closest circle of people who obeyed the aforementioned security agencies of the military regime and others who were active members of the Chilean Army.” The reference alludes above all to Dr.

Patricio Silva Garín, who was Undersecretary of Health in the Frei Montalva government and was his personal friend. Likewise, the magistrate recalls the murders of the former commander-in-chief of the Army, General Carlos Prats González, and his wife, Sofía Cuthbert; of the former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier del Solar and his assistant, Ronny Moffitt; and the attack on former Vice President Bernardo Leighton Guzmán and his wife, Anita Fresno, perpetrated in Buenos Aires, Washington, and Rome, respectively.

They had caused such international commotion that it was impossible for the dictatorship to use explosives or firearms against Frei. Therefore, the magistrate points out, the dictatorship opted for a procedure “that meant the punishable act would be imperceptible to everyone, with the exclusion of those who participated in it, taking advantage of the circumstances of helplessness in which the victim found himself as a result of his illness and prolonged stay in a hospital establishment.”

Source: puntofinal.cl, December 24, 2009