Palestinian officials raised the prospect of exhuming Yasser Arafat’s body yesterday after a Swiss laboratory said it had discovered an “unexplained” level of the radioactive element polonium on personal belongings of the late President.
The discovery during a nine-month investigation by the Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera could prove the most plausible evidence yet to fuel long-standing but uncorroborated rumours among many Palestinians that Yasser Arafat was poisoned.
The potentially deadly element – the same one blamed for the 2006 death in London of the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko – was discovered among personal effects, including clothes and a toothbrush, given to the network by Suha Arafat, the late Palestinian leader’s widow.
Mrs Arafat, who refused to allow an autopsy when her husband died in a Paris hospital in November 2004, said yesterday she would be asking for an exhumation, telling Al-Jazeera: “We must go further and exhume Yasser Arafat’s body to reveal the truth to the Muslim and Arab world.”
