Chile. Six former agents of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship sentenced for the homicide of former President Eduardo Frei

This is the first conviction in the country's history of the murder of a former head of state. The operation was to provide him with poison, which resulted in his death at 71 years.

A Chilean judge on Wednesday sentenced three to ten years in prison to six employees of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet for his responsibility in the homicide of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva in 1982.

After more than 15 years of investigation and a failure of more than 800 pages, the judge Alejandro Madrid has decided to sentence the six defendants for "simple homicide by poisoning after surgery" to which he submitted himself to former President Frei (1964-1970), at the clinic of Santa María de Santiago, on January 22, 1982, in the middle of a dictatorship, indicated a declaration of the judicial power.

The sentence was qualified as & # 39;history & # 39; by the lawyers of the Frei family, since it is the first conviction in the history of Chile for the murder of a former head of state.

The dictatorship ordered the death of Frei because the figure of the former president had become one of the biggest opponents of Pinochet, whose regime began to face the first social manifestations in the early eighties.

The magistrate sentenced the doctor Patricio Silva Garín to the effective punishment of 10 years of imprisonment at murderer, who led the operation to supply Frei with poison until he was 71 years old.

Meanwhile, he was sentenced to seven years in prison Luis Becerra Arancibia, personal driver of the president and informant of the intelligence of the dictatorship, and Raúl Lillo Gutiérrez, civilian agent of the National Intelligence Center (CNI), as co-perpetrators of the same crime.

Doctor Pedro Valdivia He was sentenced to five years in prison as an accomplice. Helmar Rosenberg and Sergio González, to three years in prison as an accessory, penalty to be met by conditional referral.

Frei died after undergoing a small digestive operation at the Santa María clinic.

After nineteen years of research, Judge Madrid established that Frei Montalva had been murdered at the clinic, a thesis defended from the beginning by Carmen Frei, daughter of the former president, who had pleaded the case before the Chilean justice.

This version was gaining weight since In 2006, the first exhumation of his remains took place.

In December 2009, Judge Madrid had already judicially established the participation of third parties in his death and had established that he had been poisoned by toxic substances.

The military dictatorship of Pinochet left more than 3,200 people were killed and responsible for the torture of some 38,000 people, according to official figures.

With information from AFP and EFE