Yasser Arafat died of natural causes and not radiation poisoning, Russian forensic scientists find
By Jonny Paul
PUBLISHED: 11:00 GMT, 26 December 2013 | UPDATED: 13:36 GMT, 26 December 2013
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 Russian experts found that Yasser Arafat had died of natural causes and not radiation poisoning
Former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died of natural causes, not radiation poisoning, the head of a Russian state forensics agency said today.
The Russian finding comes after French scientists concluded earlier this month that Arafat, who died in 2004, had not been killed with radioactive polonium.
‘Yasser Arafat died not from the effects of radiation but of natural causes,’ Vladimir Uiba, head of Federal Medical and Biological Agency, a government body that had tested samples taken from Arafat’s body.
Arafat, who signed the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords with Israel but then led an uprising against the Jewish state in 2000, died age 75 in a French hospital four weeks after falling ill in his Ramallah headquarters.
Palestinians have long suspected Israel of poisoning him, which Israel strongly denies.
The official cause of death was a massive stroke, but French doctors said at the time they were unable to determine the origin of his illness. No autopsy was carried out.
Swiss forensic experts said last month that their tests of samples taken from Arafat’s body were consistent with polonium poisoning, while not absolute proof of the cause of death.
Samples were taken from Arafat’s body in 2012 by Swiss, French and Russian experts after an al Jazeera documentary said his clothes showed high amounts of polonium.
His widow Suha Arafat filed a legal complaint in France seeking an investigation into whether he was murdered.
As part of that probe, French investigators had Arafat’s remains exhumed and ordered a series of tests on them. |
