Russia joins Arafat death investigation

Russia will join an international investigation to determine whether the first Palestinian president, Yasser Arafat, was murdered, the current Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, has said.

French and Swiss experts are due to exhume Arafat’s body in Ramallah later this month in an attempt to discover how he died after an Al Jazeera documentary in July suggested he was killed by a rare radioactive poison.

“There’s full cooperation these days between us and the French investigators and Swiss experts, and also from the Russian government,” Mr Abbas told a rain-drenched ceremony on the eighth anniversary of the death in France of the former guerrilla who led Palestinians’ campaign to create a state through years of war and peace.

Mr Abbas asked Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, for Moscow’s help during talks in Jordan last week, Palestinian sources said.

Allegations of foul play have long surrounded the demise of Mr Arafat. The case returned to the headlines in July when a Swiss institute said it had discovered high levels of the radioactive element polonium-210 on Mr Arafat’s clothing supplied by his widow Suha, who called for exhumation of her husband’s body.

Three French forensic experts are expected to visit the sepulchre in Ramallah next week.