From The Independent:
But if there’s a quintessential death of an individual that created too offensive a smell in the nostrils of his people to be forgotten, it is that of late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat in 2004. And the long-held suspicions surrounding the nature of his death were once again brought into the limelight last week when a radiation physics laboratory in Switzerland, upon request of an investigation being undertaken by Al Jazeera television, found high levels of polonium on samples taken from his hair, toothbrush and underpants which they were able to examine posthumously. The circumstances of his illness were always shrouded in mystery. Despite being flown to a French military hospital suffering from severe complications relating to flu, intestinal infection and a sharp decrease in blood platelets (thrombocytes) it took just three weeks before the 75-year-old leader fatally succumbed to his illness. Yet what was extraordinary about this case, and the reason why so many columns written following his death appeared to be laced with gossipy benzene, was that they failed to determine the exact cause of his death, saying only that he had a “mystery blood disorder”. The failure of Arafat’s family to sanction an autopsy and comments by then Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath about the French ruling out the possibility that poisoning may have caused his condition, did nothing to stem the suspicions. Fast forward seven years, and now one of the worlds leading specialist laboratories in radiation have an unequivocally confirmed that high levels of the radioactive toxin Polonium were present in his body at the time of his death.
Why Arafat, Polonium and the possible culprits?
More here.