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Ramallah: Scientists
and legal experts from Switzerland, France and Russia have begun
to arrive in the West Bank in order to exhume the body of the late
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Al Jazeera reported.
The team will open Arafat's grave tomorrow in order to test his
body for radioactive polonium, according to Tawfiq al-Tirawi, the
head of the Palestinian investigation committee.
A nine-month
investigation by Al Jazeera found elevated levels of the substance
in Arafat’s final personal effects. The findings, which were
broadcast in July, suggest that there was also a high level of
polonium in Arafat’s body when he died, raising fresh questions
about what killed the longtime Palestinian leader.
The cause of Arafat’s death has long remained a mystery. Some
reports speculated that he died from AIDS, cirrhosis of the liver,
or other diseases, but medical experts who studied his final
medical records told Al Jazeera that he was in good health until
he suddenly fell ill in October of 2004.
Many Palestinians have
long believed that Arafat was poisoned by Israel, a charge Tirawi
repeated during a press conference here on Saturday.
“We have
evidence which suggests [Arafat] was poisoned by Israelis,” he
said.
“I consider this a painful necessity. It is necessary to
find the truth in the death of President Yasser Arafat", he added.
The
Israeli government has denied any involvement in his death, and
refused to comment on Al Jazeera’s findings.
Arafat died in a French military hospital in 2004. He was buried
in a concrete tomb at the muqataa, the headquarters of the
Palestinian Authority.
The tomb will be unsealed on Tuesday, and
investigators from each of the three countries will remove
samples, which they will analyse independently, Tirawi said.
Scientists will also study a small amount of soil from Jerusalem
that was buried inside the tomb.
Arafat’s body will be reinterred
later the same day in a military ceremony.
Al Jazeera’s
investigation studied the items Arafat had with him when he died:
his comb, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh, all of which
were variously stained with his blood, sweat, saliva and urine.
The items were provided by Arafat’s widow, Suha.
His belongings were analysed by the Institut de Radiophysique in
Lausanne, Switzerland, which discovered high levels of
polonium-210. Further tests found that most of the polonium was
“unsupported,” which means that it did not come from natural
sources.
It is a highly radioactive element used, among other
things, to power spacecraft. Marie Curie discovered it in 1898,
and her daughter Irene was among the first people it killed: She
died of leukemia several years after an accidental polonium
exposure in her laboratory.
At least two people connected with
Israel’s nuclear programme also reportedly died after exposure to
the element, according to the limited literature on the subject.
But polonium’s most famous victim was Alexander Litvinenko, the
Russian spy-turned-dissident who died in London in 2006 after a
lingering illness. A British inquiry found that he was poisoned
with polonium slipped into his tea at a sushi restaurant.
Preparations began earlier this month, when the Palestinian
Authority removed the marble stones covering Arafat’s grave. The
site has been closed to the public since mid-November, and a blue
tarp covers the area around the grave.
It will take months for the scientists to finish analysing the
samples they collect. Polonium-210 has a half-life of 138 days,
meaning that half of the substance decays roughly every
four-and-a-half months.
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