Forensic team proves President's suicide

Salvador Allende, the Chilean President who was widely considered to be the world's first democratically elected Marxist, committed suicide 37 years ago, and was not murdered by right-wing revolutionaries, results of a post-mortem examination unveiled yesterday show.

A forensic team in Santiago, which has been examining Allende's exhumed body for the past two months, concluded that he died from injuries consistent with having turned an AK47 assault rifle on himself.

They found no evidence to support theories that a third party was involved.

The detailed report was welcomed by Allende's family, who have always maintained that the 65-year-old politician took his own life as troops stormed the country's presidential palace, during a United States-backed coup on September 11, 1973.

Left-wing conspiracy theorists have always maintained he was murdered by revolutionaries. They claimed his corpse was riddled with bullets, and that an "official" autopsy on the night of the coup was rigged.

- Independent