Tantalizing test results raise key issue: Who killed Arafat?
New test results on the remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "moderately support" the proposition that he died of polonium-210 poisoning but avoid the most tantalizing question of all: If it was murder, who did it?
Arafat died in November 2004 in a French hospital. He had fallen ill with symptoms including vomiting and stomach pains after eating at his headquarters in Ramallah, on the West Bank. The official cause of death was a massive stroke, but no autopsy was done.
The new tests were conducted by 10 experts at the Vaudois University Hospital Center in Lausanne, Switzerland, on remains extracted from Arafat's grave.
The tests were triggered by a year-long Al Jazeera investigation, which included a forensic examination of some of the Palestinian leader's clothing that suggested a suspicious cause of death.
The Swiss experts carefully hedged their findings, which included at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive polonium in Arafat's remains.
However, the degradation of polonium-210 over eight years and the quality of the forensic samples made a definitive conclusion difficult.
"Our observations are coherent with a hypothesis of poisoning, in any case more consistent than with the opposite hypothesis (of no poisoning)," Patrice Mangin, director of the hospital's center of legal medicine, told reporters.
Francois Bochud, who headed the Swiss team, said Thursday: "Was polonium the cause of the death for certain? The answer is no, we cannot show categorically that hypothesis that the poisoning caused was this or that."
Similar tests were also carried out by Russian and French experts. The Russian findings, Al Jazeera reported Friday, were "inconclusive," finding "radioactive background" on only one of four fragments. The French report is being withheld pending the outcome of its murder investigation.
Arafat's widow, Suha, has little doubt that murder was involved, telling Reuters, "We are revealing a real crime, a political assassination."
If Arafat's death was indeed intentional, the list of possible culprits is small:
1.Arafat's inner circle. As leader of the Palestinian Authority, he had control over vast sums of money, particularly aid from foreign governments. Arafat's widow tells Reuters that the polonium must have been administered by someone "in his close circle" because experts had told her the poison would have been put in his coffee, tea or water. She did not accuse any country or person and noted that he had many enemies.
2. Israel. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister at the time of Arafat's death, viewed him as a terrorist and an obstacle to peace. Sharon had stated publicly that he regretted not "eliminating" Arafat during the 1982 invasion of Lebanon.
Tawfik Terawi, the head of the Palestinian committee, told reporters in Ramallah on Friday that he directly blames Israel for Arafat's death. "It is not important that I say here that he was killed by polonium,'' he said. "But I say, with all the details available about Yasser Arafat's death, that he was killed and that Israel killed him." He offered no proof to support his charge.
The counter-argument is that Arafat's influence had greatly waned by the time of his death, which would have complicated relations in the region if he had been killed.
In any case, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told the BBC this week, "I will state this as simply and clearly as I can: Israel did not kill Arafat, period. And that's all there is to it."
3. Russia . This theory has less to do with motive than means. Moscow is clearly adept at the use of polonium-210 as a poison. A defecting Russian spy, Alexander Litvinenko, drank a fatal cup laced with the radioactive material in London in 2006. A dying Litvinenko accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his murder. Russia was still a key supporter of Arafat at the time of his death, but conspiracy theorists could easily envision a rogue agent aiding one or more factions.
Dave Barclay, a renowned British forensic scientist and retired detective, told Al Jazeera that after the latest tests, he is fully convinced Arafat was murdered.
"Yasser Arafat died of polonium poisoning," he said. "We found the smoking gun that caused his death. What we don't know is who's holding the gun at the time."