French judges seek to exhume Arafat

THREE French judges plan to travel to Ramallah to seek the exhumation of Yasser Arafat’s body from a limestone sepulchre as part of an investigation into whether the Palestinian leader was murdered by poison after being treated at Paris hospital in 2004.

The investigating magistrates will need approval from both Israel and the Palestinian Authority, but Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has already expressed his government’s willingness to exhume the body from a limestone sepulchre in Ramallah.