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Palestinian president ready to exhume Arafat's body to confirm
poisoning
Wednesday July 04, 2012 09:20:05 PM,
Agencies
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Doha:
Yasser Arafat's body may be exhumed to allow for more testing of
the causes of his death, the Palestinian president said Wednesday,
after a Swiss lab said it found elevated levels of a radioactive
isotope in belongings the Palestinian leader is said to have used
in his final days.
Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian
president, sees no reason why Yasser Arafat's body should not be
exhumed following the report that he may have died of
poisoning, Al Jazeera quoted his spokesman as saying on Wednesday.
Nabil Abu Rudeinah said that the Palestinian Authority would use
"Arab and international scientific expertise" to review the
findings.
A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera found that Arafat's final
belongings - his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh
- contained elevated levels of polonium, a rare, highly
radioactive element.
Scientists at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne,
Switzerland, who studied Arafat's personal items, said that his
bones could offer more conclusive evidence that he was poisoned.
"There are no political or religious reasons that prevent
researching this issue," Abu Rudeinah said, "including the
exhumation of Arafat's body by a reliable and trustworthy medical
and scientific authority."
Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, also called for an
international committee to study Arafat's death, similar to the
one investigating the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister
Rafik Hariri in 2005.
"[It] is a must," Erekat told Al Jazeera. "And we will do it first
through the United Nations Security Council. We hope everyone will
co-operate with us, because we seek the truth and nothing but the
truth."
Speaking to Al Jazeera on Wednesday, Suha Arafat, wife of the late
Palestinian leader, said the exhumation should take place as soon
as possible.
The Palestinian leader died at a
military hospital outside Paris in November 2004 of what French
doctors called a massive brain hemorrhage — weeks after he fell
violently ill at his West Bank compound.
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