Palestinians slam France’s Arafat report
Print Edition
A French report ruling out poisoning in Yasser Arafat’s 2004 death, rather than laying to rest suspicions of an assassination, has prompted denial and incredulity from Palestinian officials and relatives of the late president.
The Palestinians, who have long cried foul, with some pointing the finger directly at Israel, yesterday cited apparent inconsistencies between the French findings and separate ones from Switzerland and Russia that gave currency to alleged poisoning by polonium.
“The Swiss and Russian reports, as well as the investigations carried out over the past nine months by the Palestinian team confirm that Arafat did not die of disease or of old age,” said Ahmed Assaf, spokesman for Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas’s Fatah party. “He died from polonium,” Assaf said. “We in Fatah believe ... Israel alone is behind this crime, and we intend to get to the culprits.”
Israel has consistently denied having a hand in Arafat’s death at a French military hospital, and foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the results of the French probe were “no surprise.”
French doctors were unable to say in 2004 what killed Arafat, and an autopsy was never performed, at the request of his widow, Suha. But a 2004 French hospital report said Arafat had “four symptoms” whose simultaneous occurrence could not be explained by natural illness or disease.
In the latest report, French experts ruled out poisoning, and believe Arafat may have died of natural causes, a source close to the probe said on Tuesday.
Swiss scientists said last month their research offered some support for the suggestion that significantly higher-than-normal amounts of polonium killed Arafat.
Suha Arafat said she was “shocked” by the French report. “I’m still completely convinced that the martyr Arafat did not die a natural death, and I will keep trying to get to the truth,” she said.
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