Arafat's widow wants body exhumed after test for radioactivity
July 5, 2012 -- Updated 0023 GMT (0823 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- A stain contained higher levels of polonium-210 than a typical sample, a scientist says
- The test results do not necessarily mean Arafat was poisoned, the scientist says
- "There is sufficient evidence" Yasser Arafat was killed, PLO official says
- Use of polonium-210 as a poison "does seem a bit of a stretch," toxicologist says
(CNN) -- The widow of Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat said Wednesday she wants his body exhumed to find out whether he
was poisoned after tests showed high levels of a radioactive substance
on some of his personal belongings.
Suha Arafat told CNN she is requesting the body be exhumed "to make sure 100% of the existence of polonium."
A Swiss doctor said
Wednesday they found high levels of toxic polonium-210 on some of
Arafat's belongings, though it does not mean he suffered radiation
poisoning.
"We have evidence there
is too much polonium, but we also have hints from the medical records
that this may not be the case," said Francois Bochud, director of the
Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland. "The only way to
resolve this anomaly would be by testing the body."
¿Fue envenenado o no?
Suha Arafat on future Middle East peace
Suha Arafat said she had
not made an official request to the Palestinian Authority for exhumation
because no official request is needed. The Palestinian Authority said
Wednesday that it would not object to exhuming the body from its tomb if
Arafat's family approves.
If it turns out that
Arafat, who died in 2004, was poisoned, "Any result will be significant
for us to help know the truth," said Suha Arafat, the former leader's
widow. "It is a form of closure for our family. Closing one wound but
opening a new one, wondering who is responsible."
Bochud's research team
tested Arafat's toothbrush, clothing and keffiyeh, the trademark
black-and-white headscarf he often wore, Bochud said.
But getting data from
items like clothing "is really tricky business," said Cham Dallas, a
professor and toxicologist at the University of Georgia's Institute for
Health Management and Mass Destruction Defense.
"We don't have enough
information to make any definitive statement, but it does seem a bit of a
stretch" to conclude that Arafat was poisoned by polonium-210, he told
CNN in a telephone interview.
Dallas questioned how
much confidence the Swiss scientists could have in their measurements
and said he was looking forward to results from tests carried out on the
body after it is exhumed.
"I'd have a lot more
confidence if you could give me a bone sample," he told CNN in a
telephone interview. He cited compartments inside the bone as
particularly telling. "There's old bone and then there's new bone," he
said. "If you're sampling, it would come out very differently."
Arafat died at age 75 at
a Paris military hospital after he suffered a brain hemorrhage and
slipped into a coma. Palestinian officials said in the days before his
death that Arafat had a blood disorder -- though they ruled out leukemia
-- and that he had digestive problems.
Rumors of poisoning
circulated at the time, but Palestinian officials denied them, and
then-Foreign Minister Nabil Sha'ath said he "totally" ruled them out.
Two weeks after Arafat's
death, his nephew said medical records showed no cause of death. Nasser
al-Kidwa, who was the Palestinian observer to the United Nations, said
toxicology tests showed "no known poison" -- though he refused to
exclude the possibility that poison caused his uncle's death.
"The suspicion that he
was killed, that he was deliberately murdered, has been there all along
and most Palestinians believe that," said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the
Palestinian Liberation Organization's executive committee. "I
personally believed it because I was with him; I saw him; I saw the
transformation and it certainly was unnatural."
Ashrawi said she had
spoken with Arafat's doctors, who told her that they could not rule out
the possibility that he had been poisoned. "But we didn't have any kind
of thread, any kind of evidence," she told CNN. "This report, in many
ways, tells us our suspicions are founded that there is sufficient
evidence to say that he was killed, that he was assassinated using
polonium."
Only a few countries,
including the United States, Israel and Russia, have stocks of
polonium-210, a fact that would limit the list of possible suspects, he
said. "You would only use polonium if you were making a statement, not
if you were trying to hide," he said.
Someone trying to get
away with murder would be better off using pharmaceutical agents, since a
number of of them "disappear in the body" and cannot be identified
later, he said.
"I can't figure out why
they would use it, frankly," he said. "There are so many really cool
agents to kill people if you want to be secret and even if you want to
make a statement."
Palestinian Authority
President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered a committee investigating Arafat's
death to follow up on all reports "and to seek assistance from Arab and
international experts to find the truth behind Arafat's illness and
death," said his spokesman, Nabil Abu Rudeineh.
It should be possible to
detect any remaining polonium -- a naturally radioactive chemical
element -- in Arafat's body, despite the time that has elapsed since his
death because he was buried in a tomb, not underground, Bochud said.
Arafat's widow asked the Swiss institute to analyze some of his belongings and medical documents, Bochud said.
The Qatar-based satellite network Al Jazeera relayed the request and broadcast a report about the test results.
The testing found no evidence of traditional poison, Bochud said.
But Al Jazeera and the
family then asked him to test for radioactive material, and found an
"unexplained amount of polonium-210," he said, adding, "We are testing
tiny quantities so it is difficult to measure and not conclusive."
A body fluid stain
contained 180 megabecquerels per liter of the radioactive isotope, while
a typical sample would contain 5 megabecquerels per liter, Bochud said.
A becquerel is a unit of measurement of radioactivity.
The fabric of Arafat's clothing, without body fluid, contained less than 10 megabecquerels per liter, Bochud said.
Tests involving
biological samples -- such as urine, sweat or blood -- contained higher
levels than other samples taken from his clothing, he said.
Arafat's widow had left
his clothes inside a sports bag from the time they were returned to her
eight years ago from the hospital, Bochud said.
It was not clear whether
anything that may have happened to the clothes -- over the years or in
the testing process -- may have affected the test results.
Asked whether polonium-210 could have been applied to the items since Arafat's death, Bochud said, "Anything is possible."
Bochud also said the
Institut de Radiophysique did not verify that the clothing was Arafat's;
another organization concluded that the DNA on the items was similar to
that of Arafat's daughter.
Zahwa Arafat provided
her DNA for the comparison, Suha Arafat told CNN. The wait for test
results, which lasted months, "was emotionally difficult," she said.
Former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko died of polonium poisoning in London in 2006.
But it's hard to compare the cases of Arafat and Litvinenko, who was diagnosed when he was alive, Bochud said.
Arafat's symptoms when he died were not entirely consistent with polonium poisoning, he said.
"For example, the bone
marrow stayed in good shape until (the) death of Arafat. In other cases
of polonium poisoning there is a decaying of the bone marrow," the
medical expert said. "Another point, he did not lose his hair as would
be expected in the case of polonium." poisoning.
Scientists performed more than 50 measurements on the belongings between February and June, he said.
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