ForensicsFrench experts rule out foul play in 2004 death of Yasser Arafat

A French prosecutor yesterday announced that French medical and forensic experts have ruled out poisoning as the cause of the 2004 death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

The prosecutor of the western Paris suburb of Nanterre said the experts, following a thorough examination, found there was no foul play in Arafat’s death.

The findings by the French experts are identical to findings by a different French team (see “Yasser Arafat was not poisoned: French investigators,” HSNW, 5 December 2013), and to the findings of Russian experts (see “Arafat died of natural causes, not radiation poisoning: Russian investigators,” HSNW, 27 December 2013).

Nuclear medicine experts specifically ruled out a nuclear poisoning of Arafat (see “No proof Yasser Arafat was killed by radioactive poisoning: scientists,” HSNW, 16 October 2013).

A Swiss team, however, initially said that their test results of personal affects left behind by Arafat led them to conclude that radioactive poisoning was “more consistent” as an explanation of Arafat’s death.

A research center in the Swiss city of Lausanne had tested samples taken from Arafat’s personal belongings – a comb, a hair brush, a tooth brush, and a few items of clothing – which were given to Arafat’s widow, Suha, after his death. The Swiss scientists said they found “abnormal levels of polonium,” which is a highly radioactive toxin. The Swiss scientists stopped short, however, of saying that he had been poisoned by the substance.

Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident and a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin, died in London on 23 November 2006 after suffering from radioactive polonium-210 poisoning. Two Russian security agents have been implicated in his poisoning (see “Russian secret agents implicated in nuclear poisoning of a critic of Putin,” HSNW, 29 January 2015).

The French experts “maintain that the polonium 210 and lead 210 found in Arafat’s grave and in the samples are of an environmental nature,” the Guardian quotes Nanterre prosecutor Catherine Denis to say.

Arafat died aged 75 on 11 November 2004 at the Percy de Clamart hospital near Paris. He had been admitted there at the end of October that year after a rapid deterioration of his health while at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

In 2012 Suha Arafat, his widow, filed a complaint at a court in Nanterre, claiming that her husband was assassinated and demanding an inquiry.

The Palestinian leadership had always maintained that Arafat was poisoned by Israel. The Palestinian agreed to open Arafat’s tomb in Ramallah to allow three teams of scientists — French, Swiss, and Russian — to collect around sixty biological samples.