Yasser Arafat was not poisoned: French investigators

“Now I have to trust in justice and science and hope the experts manage to reach some conclusion.”

She added: “I am shocked by the contradictions from the most celebrated experts in Europe.”

Her lawyer, Pierre Oliver Sur, told the Guardian he and his team had examined both Swiss and French reports and compared the figures they contained. In some samples, the Swiss found more radioactive contamination than the French and in others the French found more contamination.

“Faced with experts with divergent conclusions … we will continue the debate. It’s like two sides of the same coin,” he said.

“What we are looking for is a scientific certainty and that is what we will keep looking for.”

He said he had not seen any report from the Russian experts, the third team to have examined the samples.

“We are starting from the same point. The figures are different, but they have arrived at the same conclusion: there is radioactive polonium and radioactive lead. This is a constant.”

Suha Arafat’s lawyer was wrong about the Russian investigative team: in late summer the Russian team announced, in language which was much more firm than that used by the French team, that there was no possible way Arafat was poisoned with radioactive material, because if he were so poisoned, the levels of polonium present in his body tissues would be orders of magnitude higher than the actual levels found.

The Russian team’s conclusions are especially important because the team was chosen by the Palestinian Authority. The relationship between the PA and Suha Arafat has been bad since the death of the Palestinian leaders. Arafat diverted to his personal bank accounts in Switzerland about $1.1 billion from the international aid money given to the Palestinian Authority after the PLO and Israel signed the Oslo Peace Agreement in 1992.

As long as Arafat was alive, nobody raised the issue of the diverted funds, but when he died, the PA told Suha she must return the money. At the beginning she refused, but eventually relented after the PA allowed her to keep around $70 of the funds and two luxury penthouse apartments Arafat had bought for her in Paris. The relationship between her and the Palestinian leadership, however, were damaged beyond repair.

Since the French magistrate ordered a French medical team to investigate the possible poisoning of Arafat, and since Suha chose a Swiss team to conduct a separate investigation, the PA decided they trusted the Russians more, and asked a Russian medical team to look into Arafat’s cause of death.

Arafat died in a French hospital in November 2004 at the age of 75. The French doctors who treated him said at the time that he died as a result of a stroke caused by a blood disorder, but also said they could not establish the cause of the blood disorder.

In July 2012, Suha Arafat filed a civil suit in a court in Nanterre against person or persons unknown for murder. A French investigating judge ordered a murder inquiry the following month.

To facilitate the investigation, the Palestinian Authority allowed Arafat’s body to be exhumed and body tissues taken from it. The tissue samples were given to three separate medical teams — French, Swiss, and Russian – so could study the samples independently.

The Palestinians have accused Israel of involvement in Arafat’s death even before he died: they raised the possibility of their leader having been poisoned by the Mossad as his health was rapidly declining in the last two months of his life.

Israel has consistently denied the accusation, describing it as “unreasonable and unsupported by facts.”

Yigal Palmor, spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, said the French results “come as no surprise, and their conclusion is only logical.” The French scientists were the only credible and independent team to examine samples taken from Arafat’s exhumed corpse, he added, pointing out that the Swiss scientists were commissioned by Arafat’s widow, and the Russians by the Palestinian Authority.

“Nevertheless, some people will not look at the evidence and will keep on stirring this. Like all successful soap operas, it will not end as long as there is public demand for more,” he said.