Pablo Neruda's Body Exhumed

Forensic scientists want to determine if Pinochet dictatorship had him killed

Chilean forensic scientists have exhumed the remains of Pablo Neruda, the Nobel laureate, to try to establish whether the communist intellectual was poisoned by the Pinochet dictatorship 40 years ago as he was about to flee into exile.

The casket containing the poet's remains was removed early on Monday from his seaside grave about 120km from Santiago and taken to the state Medical Legal Service in the Chilean capital for tests that could take months.