Yasser Arafat Death Report On Polonium Poisoning Given To Palestine, Results Confirmed?

A Yasser Arafat death report on alleged polonium poisoning has been to authorities in Palestine.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, some tests claimed former Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat may have have died from polonium poisoning, not natural causes.

Officially, Yasser Arafat died in 2004 while suffering from Parkinson’s Disease but the exact cause of death was never officially announced because no autopsy was performed at the request of the widow, although there was some speculation over a possible stroke. But the wife of Yasser Arafat, Suha, kept some of his old clothing and traces of polonium-210, which is a deadly radioactive isotope, were found. But whether or not polonium accidentally found its way onto Yasser Arafat is a subject of great debate.

Comparisons were made with Kremlin critic and ex-Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who died in November of 2006 after he was poisoned with polonium in London, when he was allegedly served tea during a meeting with two former colleagues. This caused the wife of Yasser Arafat to request an investigation into a potential poisoning of her husband.

So in the summer of 2012 the Palestinian leadership decided to exhume Yasser Arafat’s body in order to test for traces of polonium-210, although this action was delayed until November of 2012. Almost a year later, both a Swiss lab and a Russian team appointed by the Palestinian Authority handed in their Yasser Arafat death reports but the contents have not been announced.

But a Swiss lab in the University of Lausanne testing the body of Yasser Arafat for polonium poisoning had parts of an early report published in the Lancet journal, which confirmed that 38 items belonging to Arafat tested positive for polonium-210:

“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…. Several samples containing body fluid stains (blood and urine) contained higher unexplained polonium 210 activities than the reference samples. These findings support the possibility of Arafat’s poisoning with polonium 210. Although the absence of myelosuppression [bone marrow deficiency] and hair loss does not favor acute radiation syndrome, symptoms of nausea, vomiting, fatigue, diarrhea, and anorexia, followed by hepatic and renal failures, might suggest radioactive poisoning.”

The amount of radioactivity is measured in millibecquerels (mBq). Polonium occurs naturally in every environment at low radioactivity levels, but Yasser Arafat’s toothbrush showed levels of 54 mBq, while a urine stain measured 180 mBq. As a comparison, a normal piece of clothing measured 6.7 mBq in the Swiss lab.

But this does not mean the theory of Yasser Arafat’s poisoning will definitely be confirmed by the final report. Polonium-210 has a half life of 138 days, which means that last year there would have only been one atom in a million of the original source left over from the ravages of time. So it’s possible that if Yasser Arafat’s clothing and effects had been contaminated after his death then they could have been continually replenished by naturally occurring sources such as lead-210, lead-214, and bismuth-214. At the same time, even if Yasser Arafat was poisoned in truth it’s possible scientists may find no trace of polonium left in his exhumed body.

Do you think Yasser Arafat’s death was caused by polonium poisoning or natural causes?