MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chilean judge to probe death of Air Force general, father of ex president Bachelet

General Alberto Bachelet, loyal to the Chilean constitution to his death, was viciously tortured by fellow officers

The same judge probing the death of deposed Chilean President Salvador Allende will now investigate the death of Allende's loyal general Alberto Bachelet, whose daughter eventually became Chile's first female president.

The father of Michelle Bachelet died in prison in 1974 after Dictator Augusto Pinochet's junta convicted him of being a traitor.

He had been tortured by members of the same Air Force he had led before Pinochet deposed Allende the year before. His wife and daughter also were briefly tortured before going into exile.

Judge Mario Carroza told Chile's Radio Cooperativa that he has accepted a human rights group's complaint that Bachelet was tortured to death.

Carroza already has been investigating the events surrounding the death of Allende and hundreds of his allies who were killed or disappeared as Pinochet consolidated power.

General Bachelet was 51 when he died. He had told his family of being tortured by the same young Air Force members he had trained.

“They broke me from the inside,” Bachelet wrote in a letter from prison. “At one point they had morally torn me apart. I never thought to hate anyone, I always thought that the human being is the most marvelous of this creation and should be respected as such, but I found myself confronted with Air Force comrades whom I've known for 20 years, my own students, who treated me like a delinquent or a dog.”

In 1972, as other high-ranking military officers were conspiring with the US Central Intelligence Agency to lay the groundwork for the coup, Allende put Bachelet in charge of Chile's commerce agency, where he was responsible for overseeing food sales nationwide. Food and many other products were in short supply partly because Allende nationalized most factories and farms.

Bachelet remained loyal to Allende to the end, refusing to endorse the Sept. 11, 1973 coup even after Allende committed suicide while taking his last stand in the bombed-out presidential palace. He was arrested the same day, convicted that December and survived in prison until March 12, 1974.

Pinochet's junta also arrested the general's wife, Angela Jeria, and Michelle Bachelet in 1974. They were tortured in a secret jail for two weeks before leaving Chile. Michelle Bachelet returned in 1979 and served as president from 2006-2010. She now runs the United Nation's women's agency.