Experts deliver report into Pablo Neruda's mysterious death to Chile judge

A panel of scientific experts investigating the mysterious death of Nobel laureate poet Pablo Neruda delivered a report to a Chilean judge.

Judge Paola Plaza will study the report in a bid to determine whether Neruda was poisoned by the regime of former military dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Reports in the press this week claimed the report found he had been injected with a deadly substance, and did not die from prostate cancer, as the government had claimed upon his death in 1973, aged 69.

Neruda was a celebrated poet, politician, diplomat and bohemian figure, and also a prominent member of the Chilean communist party. 

When he died in a hospital he had been preparing to flee into exile in Mexico to lead the resistance against the Pinochet regime.

Neruda died 12 days after the violent military coup in which General Pinochet, then the commander of the army, ousted socialist President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973 with help from the United States.

Rodolfo Reyes, a lawyer and nephew of Neruda's, claimed earlier this week that he had had access to the report and that its results were sufficient to confirm his uncle was poisoned.

"Of course this bacteria is a biological weapon that was injected into Pablo Neruda, and he died a few hours later," Reyes said.

"Notwithstanding that in 1973 there was still not, in the dictatorship, a development of assassinations using chemical methods."

He said those relatives claiming otherwise "do not represent the family."