THE death of Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda days after Chile’s 1973 military coup should be reinvestigated, an appeals court has ruled, saying that new steps could help clarify the circumstances of the communist poet’s death.

Last December, a judge rejected a request by Neruda’s nephew Rodolfo Reyes to reopen the case to look for causes other than cancer, listed on his death certificate. Mr Reyes said forensic experts from Canada, Denmark and Chile had found evidence of poisoning.

Tests carried out in Danish and Canadian laboratories indicated that Neruda’s body had “a great quantity of Cloristridium botulinum, which is incompatible with human life,” Mr Reyes said. The toxin can cause paralysis of the nervous system.

The long-stated official position is that Neruda died of complications from prostate cancer, but the poet’s driver Manuel Araya alleged for decades that his employer had been poisoned.

In December, a judge ruled that the forensic tests had already been carried out or the results were “late” and didn’t lead anywhere.

On Tuesday, the appeals court in the capital Santiago unanimously revoked the judge’s ruling and ordered that the procedures requested by the nephew be done.

They include a calligraphic analysis of the death certificate, a meta-analysis of the test results carried out by foreign agencies and subpoenas for statements from Chile’s documentation project and an expert on Clostridium botulinum.

Neruda, who was best known for his love poems, won the 1971 Nobel prize for literature.

He was also a Communist Party member and friend of president Salvador Allende, whose government was toppled in General Augusto Pinochet’s CIA-backed coup.

Following the military takeover, Neruda planned to go into exile in Mexico, but a day before his planned departure, he was taken by ambulance to a Santiago clinic, where he died on September 23 1973.