Swiss team: Arafat poisoned to death with polonium
Haaretz
▻http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/1.556656
A Swiss forensic team has found that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned to death in 2004 with radioactive polonium.
A team of experts, including from Lausanne University Hospital’s Institute of Radiation Physics, opened Arafat’s grave in the West Bank city of Ramallah last November, and took samples from his body to seek evidence of alleged poisoning.
According to Qatar-based Al-Jazeera, the Swiss team discovered levels of polonium at least 18 times higher than normal in Arafat’s ribs, pelvis and in the soil that absorbed his remains.
“We are revealing a real crime, a political assassination,” Arafat’s widow, Suha Arafat, told Reuters in Paris.
“This has confirmed all our doubts,” said Suha Arafat, who met members of the Swiss forensic team in Geneva on Tuesday. “It is scientifically proved that he didn’t die a natural death and we have scientific proof that this man was killed.”
She did not accuse any country or person, and acknowledged that the historic leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization had many enemies.
The Israeli government, however, dismissed the Swiss report, saying that the “findings are not conclusive.”
“Even if they did find traces of polonium that could indicate poisoning, there’s no evidence of how that poisoning occurred,” The Guardian quoted Palmor as saying. “Before the Palestinian Authority jumps to conclusions, there are many questions still to be answered.”
