Yasser Arafat’s body to be exhumed after fresh claims of poisoning

THE Palestinian Authority yesterday gave its approval to exhume the body of Yasser Arafat, the founding father of the Palestinian national movement, after new suspicions were raised that he was murdered and perhaps poisoned by a radioactive element eight years ago.

• Yasser Arafat’s body to be exhumed amid fresh suspicions of foul play

• Palestinian leader may have been poisoned by radioactive element

A Swiss research institute examined clothing and personal effects of Mr Arafat provided by his widow, Suha ,for an investigation aired on Tuesday by the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television.

The institute’s directors said they had found “surprisingly” high levels of polonium-210, the substance found to have killed Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006. But it said symptoms described in Mr Arafat’s medical reports were not consistent with presence of the radioactive agent.

Mr Arafat died on 11 November, 2004, at the age of 75 at a military hospital outside Paris.

Israel, on the receiving end of charges over the years that it poisoned Mr Arafat, offered a low-key response to the renewed scrutiny of the death of the man who led the Palestinian statehood drive using both violence and diplomacy. “We’re not paying any serious attention to this,” said Paul Hirschson, a foreign ministry spokesman.

Mr Arafat is remembered among his people with a reverence far outstripping that of his less charismatic successor, president Mahmoud Abbas. The exhumation, if coupled with any evidence of poisoning, is expected by Palestinian leaders to lead to a further deterioration in already troubled ties with Israel.

In the West Bank, some are already treating the al-Jazeera findings as conclusive. Exhuming Mr Arafat’s body and testing it “will provide the ultimate proof he was asssassinated, which we are almost sure of and it will create the big question of who did it, how it was done and who collaborated,” said independent MP Mustafa Barghouthi.

“It is clear from the discovery of polonium that probably the one responsible for this act is Israel, since very few countries have access to it. The question is what will be done to bring those responsible to justice.”

A spokesman for Mr Abbas said the Palestinian Authority was prepared for “full co-operation to find the real reasons for the illness and martyrdom of Yasser Arafat”.

Mrs Arafat told al-Jazeera “I want the world to know the truth.”

Avi Dichter, head of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence agency in 2003, told interviewers yesterday that Israel had not introduced polonium into Mr Arafat’s food. “Yasser Arafat had many enemies, domestically and abroad. But let them investigate.”