Palestinians Say Israel 'Only Suspect' in Arafat Death
The Palestinians said Friday Israel is the only suspect in the "assassination" of Yasser Arafat, a day after Swiss experts said tests suggested he was killed by polonium poisoning.
Arafat, aged 75, died in Paris on November 11, 2004 after falling sick a month earlier. Doctors were unable to specify the cause of death and no post-mortem was carried out.
Palestinian society has long given currency to the rumor that Arafat was murdered, with Israel the party most often blamed.
But there has never been any proof.
"We say that Israel is the one and only suspect in the case of Yasser Arafat's assassination, and we will continue to carry out a thorough investigation to find out and confirm all the details and all elements of the case," said Tawfiq Tirawi, head of the Palestinian Authority's inquiry into the death.
"This is the crime of the 21st century," Tirawi told a news conference in Ramallah. "The fundamental (goal) is to find out who is behind the liquidation of Yasser Arafat."
Israel once again firmly denied killing Arafat.
"I will state this as simply and clearly as I can: Israel did not kill Arafat. Period. And that's all there is to it," foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AFP.
"The Palestinians should stop leveling all these groundless accusations at Israel without the slightest proof. Israel did not do it. Enough is enough."
In November 2012, Arafat's remains were exhumed and samples taken, partly to investigate whether he had been poisoned with polonium. That suspicion had grown after the assassination in that manner of Russian ex-spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
Speaking to reporters in Lausanne on Thursday, the Swiss team said the test results neither confirmed nor denied polonium was the actual cause of his death, although they provided "moderate" backing for the idea he was poisoned by the rare and highly radioactive element.
Tirawi said Palestinian investigators had studied the findings of Swiss scientists released this week which "moderately" supported the notion of poisoning.
They said the quantity of the deadly substance found on his remains pointed to the involvement of a third party.
"We can't say that polonium was the source of his death... nor can we rule it out," said Professor Francois Bochud of the Lausanne Institute of Applied Radiophysics.
Bochud's lab measured levels of polonium up to 20 times higher than it is used to detecting.
Meanwhile, at Friday's press conference, Palestinian justice minister Ali Mhanna urged France to send findings from an investigation launched more than a year ago.
"We've so far received no response from the French side. We've sent a letter to the French demanding they accelerate the sending of results, and we're still waiting," said Mhanna.
"From the beginning the French have told us they can't send the results until there's Franco-Palestinian judicial cooperation."
Tirawi declared that "France knows the whole truth and details of the martyrdom of Yasser Arafat".
Some 60 samples were taken from Arafat's remains in November 2012 and divided between Swiss and Russian investigators and a French team carrying out a probe at the request of Arafat's video.
So far, there has been no word on the French test results.
But Abdullah al-Bashir, who led the Palestinian medical team, said the Russian report they received on November 2 found insufficient evidence that polonium poisoning killed Arafat.
"The position of the Russian team is that after thorough investigation, the polonium 210 content (of Arafat's remains)... does not give sufficient evidence to say it caused the acute radiation syndrome that led to death," he told the conference.
"The Russian report, using advanced medical techniques, pointed to new data that require further study," he said, without elaborating.
But Bashir added that the Swiss, Russian and Palestinian sides agreed the death was not from "natural" causes such as "old age or disease."
On Thursday, Palestinian officials demanded an international inquiry into Arafat's "killing."
"The results prove Arafat was poisoned by polonium," said senior Palestine Liberation Organization official Wasel Abu Yusef.
"This substance is owned by states, not people, meaning that the crime was committed by a state," he told AFP, calling for an "international committee" to probe the killing along the lines of the one that investigated the 2005 murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://naharnet.com/stories/en/104937 |