‘Arafat was poisoned’

GENEVA. — The high levels of polonium found in the remains and personal effects of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat indicate third party involvement in his 2004 death, Swiss scientists said yesterday.
Professor Francois Bochud of the Lausanne Institute of Applied Radiophysics said his team measured levels of polonium up to 20 times higher than it was used to detecting in its research.

“By definition, that indicates third party involvement,” Bochud told reporters.
“Our results offer moderate backing for the theory of poisoning.”

The lab’s probe could not say for sure whether Arafat was killed by polonium, however.
“We can’t say that polonium was the source of his death . . . nor can we rule it out,” said Bochud, whose institute is part of Switzerland’s respected Vaudois University Hospital Centre.

His colleague Patrice Mangin said the lab could have been categorical in its findings if it had been able to obtain biological samples from the Palestinian leader right after his death nine years ago.

Palestinian officials demanded a global probe into the “killing” of Yasser Arafat yesterday, a day after it emerged that Swiss forensic tests showed he probably died from polonium poisoning. A senior figure in the Palestine Liberation Organisation called for an international inquiry to determine who was behind it.

“The (test) results proved Arafat was poisoned by polonium, and this substance is owned by states, not people, meaning that the crime was committed by a state,” said Wasel Abu Yusef of the PLO’s executive committee.

“Just as a committee was formed to investigate the killing of (slain Lebanese prime minister) Rafiq Hariri, there must be a international committee to investigate the killing of president Arafat.”

His remarks came a day after Al-Jazeera published a report by Swiss scientists that said the results of tests on Arafat’s remains “moderately support the proposition that the death was the consequence of poisoning with polonium-210”.

Arafat died in France on November 11, 2004 at the age of 75, but doctors were unable to specify the cause of death. No autopsy was carried out at the time, in line with his widow Suha’s request.

Officials from Fatah, which dominates both the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, were scheduled to meet yesterday to discuss the findings, a senior party member told AFP.

Arafat’s remains were exhumed in November 2012 and samples taken, partly to investigate whether he had been poisoned — a suspicion that grew after the assassination of Russian ex-spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.

“New toxicological and radio-toxicological investigations were performed, demonstrating unexpectedly high levels of polonium-210 and lead-210 activity in many of the analysed specimens,” according to the November 5 report by 10 Swiss experts quoted by Al-Jazeera.
It said polonium levels in “bones and soft tissues were up to 20 times larger than references in the literature”, firmly ruling out the possibility previously reported in some media that cigarette smoke had caused greater than normal polonium levels among Arafat’s personal effects.

Last month, The Lancet medical journal said Swiss scientists had found traces of polonium in separate tests on Arafat’s clothing which “support the possibility” he was poisoned. — AFP.