On September 11, 1973, Salvador Allende, President of Chile, died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds during a coup d'état led by the Chilean Army Commander-in-Chief Augusto Pinochet. After decades of suspicions that Allende might have been assassinated by the Chilean Armed Forces, a Chilean court in 2011 authorized the exhumation and autopsy of Allende's remains. A team of international experts examined the remains and concluded that Allende had shot himself with an AK-47 assault rifle. In December 2011, the judge in charge of the investigation affirmed the experts' findings and ruled Allende's death a suicide.[2] On September 11, 2012, the 39th anniversary of Allende's death, a Chilean appeals court unanimously upheld the trial court's ruling, officially closing the case.[3]