Polonium-210 found on Yasser Arafat's toothbrush, clothes

[Sidewinder]

ZURICH - Traces of the poisonous element polonium have been found in the belongings of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, a Swiss institute said on Wednesday, and a television report said his widow had demanded his body be exhumed for further tests.

Arafat died at a hospital in France in 2004, after a sudden illness which baffled doctors. Many Palestinians have long suspected he was poisoned.

Darcy Christen, spokesman for the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, told Reuters on Tuesday it had found "surprisingly" high levels of polonium-210 in Arafat's belongings.

But he stressed that clinical symptoms described in Arafat's medical reports were not consistent with polonium-210 and that conclusions could not be drawn as to whether the Palestinian leader was poisoned or not.

The Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite channel said the institute had tested Arafat's personal effects, given them by his widow.

'Unexplained'
Its documentary said they showed that his clothes, toothbrush and kaffiyeh headscarf contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element.

"I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids," Francois Bochud, director of the institute, said in the documentary.

Bochud said the only way to confirm the findings would be to exhume Arafat's body to test it for polonium-210.

"But we have to do it quite fast because polonium is decaying, so if we wait too long, for sure, any possible proof will disappear," he told Al Jazeera.

Polonium was found to have caused the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006, and he was assumed to have been deliberately poisoned.

Arafat's widow Suha said she would ask for Arafat's body - buried in the West Bank town of Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian self-rule authority - to be exhumed.

Speaking at the end of the documentary, aired on Al Jazeera's English and Arabic channels, she said: "We have to go further and exhume Yasser Arafat's body to reveal the truth to all the Muslim and Arab world."

Arafat led the Palestinian Liberation Organisation's fight against Israel from the 1960s but signed a peace agreement with the Jewish state in 1993 establishing Palestinian self-rule areas in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

His mysterious death came four years into a Palestinian uprising, after years of talks with Israel failed to lead to a Palestinian state. French doctors who treated Arafat in his final days could not establish the cause of death.

French officials refused to give details of his condition, citing privacy laws, fuelling a host of rumors and theories over the nature of his illness.

Let the conspiracy theories bloom.

[Vehrec]

Polonium, according to Richard Rhodes in the Making of the Atomic Bomb, is a migratory element that spreads upstream against a current of air, up and out of a beaker and in other highly improbable ways. Ccould this be laboratory contamination?

[Sarevok]

Polonium is known to have been used as a tool of assassination before.

Remember the killing of Alexander Litvinenko ?

If the report is true it almost certainly speaks of foul play. It is just kind of thing Israelis would do.

[madd0ct0r]

the article also states his symptoms did not match that of polonium.

still, it's a hell of a coincidence.

[General Zod]

So how do they know the polonium got on his effects before he died?

[Napoleon the Clown]

They don't. That's why they want to test his body. They haven't said "He was poisoned by polonium." In fact, they've said "This isn't evidence of polonium poisoning, just unusual enough to warrant investigating further."

[eyl]

Polonium is known to have been used as a tool of assassination before.

Remember the killing of Alexander Litvinenko ?

If the report is true it almost certainly speaks of foul play. It is just kind of thing Israelis would do.

I don't know...Polonium is kind of an exotic way to kill someone. It seems to me it's only really useful if you wnt to kill someone in a way it's known a state is behind it, and if that's the case, Israel had much simpler options available.

I'm also surprised they could pick it up after 8 years; Polonium 210 has a half-life of less than 140 days, which means there's less than one-millionth of the original quantity left. I wonder whether the items may have picked up contamination later somehow.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Some are suggesting it was planted for the exact reason you've stated. linky

[Sea Skimmer]

I don't know...Polonium is kind of an exotic way to kill someone. It seems to me it's only really useful if you wnt to kill someone in a way it's known a state is behind it, and if that's the case, Israel had much simpler options available.

Well advantage is its also not a compound anyone would normally test for nor can anyone do so easily. The stuff is sold commercially, if only to a limited number of companies, so its not limited to states. Its pretty unlikely as an Israeli assassination method, but Israel isn't the only group that wanted Arafat dead either.

I'm also surprised they could pick it up after 8 years; Polonium 210 has a half-life of less than 140 days, which means there's less than one-millionth of the original quantity left. I wonder whether the items may have picked up contamination later somehow.

That is the killer, the levels the Swiss lab reported are high, it would have taken a completely massive level of poisoning for them to have been present eight years ago. Meanwhile no tests have been done on the storage area for the personal items provided for tests, or his wife who handled them, nor have Arafat's medical records ever been made public. Not much reason to believe this test proves anything in isolation. The Palestinian Authority has said it has no plans to dig up his grave either.

Course, even if Polonium 210 didn't kill him, some other poison is entirely possible, but so are a dozen other things.