Body of late Chilean president Allende exhumed in Chile

May 23, 2011, 16:35 GMT

Santiago - The remains of former Chilean president Salvador Allende were exhumed Monday in Santiago's General Cemetery to establish the cause of his death during a coup to oust him in 1973.

The exhumation had been requested by Allende's family and ordered by a judge. It was carried out by seven foreign experts and five Chilean experts, in the presence of the late president's family and of a small group of leaders of the Chilean left.

The body shows a bullet wound to the head.

'These tests had never been carried out and it may happen that they show results that are different from the version of events that we have all accepted as true to this day,' said president of the Party for Democracy, Carolina Toha, who was at the cemetery.

According to the version believed by his advisors, friends and family, Allende committed suicide on September 11, 1973, as he resisted the military coup led by general Augusto Pinochet that toppled his leftist government. He is believed to have used an AK-47 rifle that had been a present from Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

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.

'From here to the cemetery,' 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.

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.

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