Nobel-winning poet Pablo Neruda was poisoned, forensic experts say

New evidence is coming to light nearly 50 years after the death of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda.

The Nobel Prize-winner died of poisoning, according to forensic experts.

The news was shared by Neruda’s nephew, Rodolfo Reyes, in an interview Monday with Spanish news agency EFE, reports the Associated Press.

Reyes said forensic tests in Danish and Canadian labs indicated a presence of “a great quantity of Cloristridium botulinum,”, a neurotoxin that causes botulism. Reyes claimed the poison was administered to Neruda when he was still alive.

It’s the latest development in one of the ongoing debates of post-coup Chile.

Neruda, was 69 and suffering from prostate cancer at the time of his death. The poet died in the chaos that followed Chile’s Sept. 11, 1973, coup which overthrew President Salvador Allende and put Gen. Augusto Pinochet in power, backed by the United States government and President Nixon.

Neruda was noted to be a friend of Allende’s and was a sympathizer to his Communist ideologies. Despite suspicion surrounding his death, the official position of post-coup Chile maintained Neruda died from cancer-related complications.

His body was first exhumed in 2013. A judicial investigation took place at the urging of his family and his driver, Manuel Araya, who has long believed the poet was poisoned.

After initial reports in 2015, the Chilean government admitted foul play was not only possible but likely.

“It’s clearly possible and highly probable that a third party” was responsible for Neruda’s death, they said in a statement from The Interior Ministry.

But until now, it had not been proven.

After the coup, Neruda had planned to go into exile and continue to use his poetry to speak out against the Chilean dictatorship.

Best known for his love poems, Neruda won the 1971 Nobel Prize for Literature. In recent years, he has received criticism from feminist groups over a rape he committed in the 1930s and which he recounted in his book “I Confess That I Have Lived.” He is also criticized for abandoning his only daughter, Malva Marina, because she was born with hydrocephalus.