Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Palestine: Arafat's body to be exhumed amid reports of polonium poisoning .

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat may have died after being poisoned by polonium, a new investigation suggests. His widow is now certain his death was not natural, and wants his body exhumed for further study.

­The Palestinian Authority has already agreed to give its permission to the procedure, saying it will cooperate with anyone interested in establishing the cause of death. The Israeli government also has to give its formal permission to take bone samples out of the West Bank.
A nine-month investigation conducted by Al-Jazeera has concluded that Arafat’s personal belongings contained abnormally high levels of polonium, a rare and highly radioactive element. The items, including his clothing, his toothbrush, and even his iconic kaffiyeh, were supplied to Al-Jazeera by his widow, Suha Arafat. They were then analyzed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland.

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

 Scientists found that the amount of polonium on some of Arafat’s belongings was ten times higher than that on control subjects. For example, his urine-stained underwear contained 180 millibecquerels (mBq) of polonium, compared to a control subject’s count of 6.7 mBq. Arafat’s toothbrushes also had an elevated polonium level of 54 mBq.

The uncovered traces of polonium, however, are mere fractions of what could have been the cause of Arafat’s death. The polonium-210 isotope has a half-life of 138 days, meaning half of the substance decays every four and half months. Given that Arafat died almost eight years ago, the current amount of polonium present would be less than one two-millionth of the original amount.

 
Additional tests indicate that most of the polonium in Arafat’s belongings was “unsupported,” meaning it came from unnatural sources.

Arafat's death was "not natural"....read more