Russian Inquiry Finds No Radiation Link to Arafat’s Death
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Version 0 of 1. MOSCOW — A Russian investigation into the death of the former Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat has concluded that his death was not caused by radiation, the lead investigator said on Thursday. The finding comes after a French inquiry found traces of a radioactive isotope of polonium, and a Swiss investigation said the time frame of Mr. Arafat’s illness and death was consistent with that of polonium poisoning. Vladimir Uiba, director of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency, said that Mr. Arafat died of natural causes and that the agency had no plans to conduct further tests. Teams of scientists from France, Switzerland and Russia had been asked to determine whether polonium, a rare and extremely lethal substance, played a role in Arafat’s death, in a French military hospital in 2004. French experts found traces of polonium but said it was “of natural environmental origin,” according to Mr. Arafat’s widow, Suha Arafat. Swiss scientists, however, said that they found elevated traces of polonium-210 and lead, and that the time frame of Arafat’s illness and death was consistent with poisoning from ingesting polonium. “It was a natural death; there was no impact of radiation,” Mr. Uiba said, according to Russian news agencies. In October, he was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that Mr. Arafat “could not have been poisoned by polonium” and that “traces of such a substance were not found.” There was no immediate explanation as to how the three investigations could have come to such different conclusions. Mr. Arafat died Nov. 11, 2004, a month after falling ill at his West Bank headquarters. At the time, French doctors said he died of a stroke and had a blood-clotting problem, but records were inconclusive about what caused that condition. Palestinians have long suspected Israel of poisoning Mr. Arafat, an allegation that Israel denies. Russia, meanwhile, has had strong ties with Palestinian authorities since Soviet times when Moscow supported their struggle. Dr. Abdullah Bashir, who leads the Palestinian medical committee investigating Mr. Arafat’s death, said the committee was studying the Russian and Swiss reports. “When we finish, we are going to announce the results,” Dr. Bashir said in a telephone interview from Amman, Jordan. He would not say when that might be. Mr. Arafat’s widow filed a legal complaint in France seeking an investigation into whether he was murdered after a 2012 report that said traces of polonium were found on his clothes. As part of that inquiry, French investigators had Mr. Arafat’s remains exhumed and ordered a series of tests on them. Polonium occurs naturally in very low concentrations in the Earth’s crust and also is produced artificially in nuclear reactors. There are also tiny, generally undetectable amounts of polonium in human beings. On Thursday, the Palestinian ambassador to Russia, Fayed Mustafa, was quoted by the state RIA Novosti news agency as saying that the Palestinian authorities respected the Russian experts’ conclusions but considered it necessary to continue research into Mr. Arafat’s death. |