MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Unveiling Pinochet's bacteriological lab.

A prosecutor will be sending the Chilean Army an official letter requesting all information available on the bacteriological laboratory that the Army had in Santiago during the military regime of General Pinochet.

Senator Carmen Frei and her solicitor Alvaro Varela revealed they had met with the Prosecutor of the case who is investigating the death of Eugenio Berríos, a former chemist from the regime's Secret Services and the unexplained death of former president Eduardo Frei Montalve in the eighties during surgery.

"The Prosecutor informed us that in the coming days he will be sending Army Commander in Chief Juan Emilio Cheyre a new officio and we expect this time he will deliver all the documents", said Senator Frei, daughter of the deceased former president.

Attorney Varela said the Frei family interest is in the structure and organization of the Secret Services laboratory. "Justice has determined that a lab which was operated by Army Intelligence was where some products for the elimination of people were elaborated, and that lab had an unusually intense activity the days before Mr. Frei's death", indicated Mr. Varela. "We're certain that the elements that finally killed Mr. Frei were elaborated in that lab. Medical staff and high ranking Army officers worked in that lab, they had major responsibilities and some of them are still alive".

Senator Frei said the family has "founded suspicions" that third parties were involved in her father's death. "There are people who know about this and we're asking they formally reply to the requests which they haven't done so far".

Former president Eduardo Frei died January 1982, victim of a mysterious triple origin septicaemia while recovering from successful stomach surgery.

Chemist Eugenio Berríos, who apparently elaborated poisonous gases in the lab and at one moment feared for his life fled to Uruguay, where he disappeared and was eventually found dead buried in the sand in a beach, forty miles east of Montevideo with two bullets in the head.

Apparently Chilean and Uruguayan military intelligence officers were involved in the abduction and disappearance of Mr. Berríos.