CHILE EXHUMES BODY OF FORMER SECRET POLICE AGENT

(Nov. 3, 2005) Investigations into the possible assassination of former President Eduardo Frei have led officials to exhume the body of former Directorate of National Intelligence (DINA) agent Manuel Leyton. According to testimonies of former DINA officials, Leyton was killed by a lethal dose of sarin gas in an agency medical clinic on May 29, 1977.

The connection between the two men revolves around yet a third person, Eugenio Berrios, a DINA chemist who is credited for developing the sarin gas for former dictator Augusto Pinochet’s military regime in the mid 1970s.

Berrios disappeared from Chile in 1992 after being called to testify about his role in the assassination of Orlando Letelier, a prominent critic of the Pinochet regime murdered in Washington, D.C. in 1976.

After his disappearance, Berrios resurfaced in Uruguay in 1993 when he turned himself into police officials, apparently willing to confess to his activities while working for the military regime. However, before he could testify, he was shot twice in the head by DINA agents and left on a beach in Uruguay.

Leyton was poisoned after being arrested for car theft in 1977. While in police custody he confessed that the car belonged to a man who was kidnapped and later thrown out of a military helicopter by agents working for the Pinochet regime.

Former President Frei died under mysterious circumstances in a military hospital after a undergoing a routine gastric hernia operation in 1982. At the time, regime officials blamed a post-surgery infection for Frei’s sudden death.

It is possible that the Leyton murder was a laboratory test of the sarin gas performed by Berrios in 1977 and that chemical analysis of his remains could show similarities to the results of the tests being performed on the body of former President Frei.
Frei’s body was shipped to the U.S. at the beginning of the year for an autopsy, while Leyton’s remains are being examined by Chile’s Legal Medical Service (SML). Officials expect to have the results from the Frei case by the end of November. No dates have yet been given as to when the other autopsy will be complete.