Nobel laureate Neruda's body exhumed in murder probe

Chile's forensic and legal experts on Monday exhumed the remains of renowned poet and Noble Prize winner Pablo Neruda, who some suspected was murdered by the country's former military dictatorship.

The poet's remains were disintered from its grave in Isla Negra, a seaside town 140 km from Santiago, and transferred to Santiago for forensic examination.

Patricio Bustos, director of the Forensic Medical Service, said toxicological tests will reveal any traces of "not only classical poisons, but also any other drugs used in non-recommended dosages."

Born in 1904, the poet died in Sept. 1973, just days after a military coup ousted democratically-elected then president Salvador Allende.

Neruda was supposedly killed by prostate cancer, but his driver Manuel Araya and others suspected he might have been murdered.

The investigation into the causes of Neruda's death began in 2011, after Araya suggested in an interview that a doctor might have given him a lethal injection on the orders of the then military regime.

On Sept 23, 1973, a few days after the military coup led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the cancer-afflicted Neruda was taken to Santa Maria Hospital, where the official record showed he had died of that disease.

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