PARIS — Swiss scientists who conducted tests on samples taken from Yasser Arafat’s body have found at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive polonium in his remains. The scientists said they were confident up to an 83 percent level that the late Palestinian leader was poisoned with it, a conclusion that they said “moderately supports” polonium as the cause of his death.
A 108-page report (PDF) by the University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, which was obtained exclusively by Al Jazeera, found unnaturally high levels of polonium in Arafat’s ribs and pelvis, and in soil stained with his decaying organs.
The Swiss scientists, along with French and Russian teams, obtained the samples last November after Arafat's body was exhumed from a mausoleum in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.
Dave Barclay, a U.K. forensic scientist and retired detective, told Al Jazeera that with these results he was wholly convinced that Arafat was murdered.
“Yasser Arafat died of polonium poisoning,” he said. “We found the smoking gun that caused his death. What we don’t know is who’s holding the gun at the time.
“The level of polonium in Yasser Arafat’s rib … is about 900 millibecquerels,” Barclay said. “That is either 18 or 36 times the average, depending on the literature.”
Suha Arafat, the Palestinian leader’s widow, received a copy of the report in Paris on Tuesday. “When they came with the results, I’m mourning Yasser again,” she said. “It’s like you just told me he died.”
The Swiss report examined only the question of what killed Arafat. It did not address or point toward who killed him or how.
Image from the expert forensic report of where the samples were taken from the late Palestinian leader's skeleton. CHUV
By October 2004, toward the end of the second intifada, Arafat had been holed up for more than two years in his Ramallah presidential compound, which Israeli troops had surrounded and partly razed. He was elderly and frail, but his medical reports show he was “in good overall health and did not have any particular risk factors,” the Swiss report states.
On the evening of Oct. 12, Arafat suddenly fell ill after eating a meal. Based on his symptoms — nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain — his personal physician initially diagnosed flu.
But his health deteriorated swiftly, and Egyptian and Tunisian doctors flown in to see him could not pinpoint the source of his sickness.
On Oct. 29, a wan and weak Arafat was carried in a wheelchair from his headquarters. He waved and blew kisses to a waiting crowd and was put aboard a helicopter and taken to Jordan. From there, a French government plane carried him to Paris for emergency treatment at Percy military hospital.
French doctors were unable to diagnose or halt his decline, and he soon lapsed into a coma. On Nov. 11, Arafat, who symbolized the fight for Palestinian statehood, died at the age of 75.
Jews killed arafat is less likely than the Palestinians killing arafat. Source: Time Magazine
http://world.time.com/2013/11/06/arafat-poisoning-report-ambiguous-and-inconclusive/#ixzz2jxtuzQvj
If he were poisoned, the question is: Who had the ability to slip it into his plate of chicken and rice?
Israel is the answer that leaps to many minds. Within hours of the al-Jazeera report, Palestinian advocates were circulating a partial list of Israeli assassinations of Palestinians. But spokesmen for the Israeli government have long denied any involvement publicly, and, privately, Israeli security officials have debated the question along with everyone else — not something that happens when, for instance, an Iranian nuclear scientist is rubbed out.
But suspicion also clings to Arafat’s inner circle. It’s a logical suspicion given the crucial question of access to his food — and the Swiss study assumes the polonium was ingested (which the report says might explain why, while he displayed other symptoms consistent with radiation poisoning, his hair did not fall out). Some analysts say the “insider” scenario is supported by the dire political situation at the time — the Palestinian cause was being held hostage with Arafat unbending at its helm, leading his people — many believed — nowhere.
