Arafat not poisoned, Russians declare

 

 

  

 

Russia said Thursday Yasser Arafat died of natural causes, not radiation poisoning, but a Palestinian official suggested the finding was “politicised” and said an investigation would continue.

The findings are the latest twist in an almost decade-long mystery over the former Palestinian leader’s death.

The official cause of death was a stroke, but French doctors said at the time they were unable to determine the origin of Arafat’s illness. No autopsy was carried out.

His widow, Suha Arafat, has argued he was killed by a political assassin who was close to her husband.

His body was exhumed last year, nine years after his death, and teams of scientists from Russia, France and Switzerland were all given samples from his remains to determine how he died. The Russian findings support a French scientists’ assessment released earlier this month which concluded that Arafat, who died in 2004 aged 75, was not killed with radioactive polonium. An earlier conclusion by Swiss experts last month, however, stated with 83 per cent certainty that Mr Arafat was poisoned with polonium.

Switzerland’s Institute for Radiation Physics reported finding traces of polonium on Arafat’s clothes and led to some critics accusing Israel of poisoning him — a charge the country denies. Polonium occurs in low concentrations in the Earth’s crust and also is produced in nuclear reactors.

“We have completed all the studies,” said Vladimir Uiba, the head of Russia’s Federal Medical-Biological Agency, yesterday. “The person died a natural death and not from radiation.”

Fayed Mustafa, the Palestinian ambassador to Russia, was quoted as saying that the Palestinian authorities respected the Russian experts’ conclusions but considered it necessary to continue research into Arafat’s death.

The Swiss expert who examined samples of Yasser Arafat’s remains dismissed the Russian findings. “The Russians, they make claims without providing any data, without providing any scientific arguments. For me that is empty, a political declaration,” said Francois Bochud, the director of the Lausanne Radiophysics Institute.