Chile exhumes remains of late president Allende

Chile exhumes remains of late president Allende

Chile on Monday exhumed the remains of former president Salvador Allende, hoping to finally determine whether he committed suicide or was murdered during a 1973 coup.

Officials hope that a forensic analysis of Allende's remains will resolve a decades-old controversy over his death in his presidential palace on September 11, 1973 in the midst of the coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power.

The official version was that Allende killed himself with an assault rifle -- a gift from Cuban leader Fidel Castro -- as the La Moneda presidential palace was being bombed by Air Force planes and besieged by tanks and soldiers ...