Tantalizing test results raise key issue: Who killed Arafat?

New test results on the remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "moderately support" the proposition that he died of polonium-210 poisoning but avoid the most tantalizing question of all: If it was murder, who did it?Arafat died in November 2004 in a French hospital. He had fallen ill with symptoms including vomiting and stomach pains after eating at his headquarters in Ramallah, on the West Bank. The official cause of death was a massive stroke, but no autopsy was done.The new tests were conducted by 10 experts at the Vaudois University Hospital Center in Lausanne, Switzerland, on remains extracted from Arafat's grave.The tests were triggered by a year-long Al Jazeera investigation,alligator shear which included a forensic examination of some of the Palestinian leader's clothing that suggested a suspicious cause of death.

The Swiss experts carefully hedged their findings, which included at least 18 times the normal levels of radioactive polonium in Arafat's remains.However, the degradation of polonium-210 over eight years and the quality of the forensic samples made a definitive conclusion difficult."Our observations are coherent with a hypothesis of poisoning, in any case more consistent than with the opposite hypothesis of no poisoning," Patrice Mangin,alligator shear director of the hospital's center of legal medicine, told reporters.Francois Bochud, who headed the Swiss team, said Thursday: "Was polonium the cause of the death for certain? The answer is no, we cannot show categorically that hypothesis that the poisoning caused was this or that."

Similar tests were also carried out by Russian and French experts. The Russian findings, Al Jazeera reported Friday, were "inconclusive," finding "radioactive background" on only one of four fragments. The French report is being withheld pending the outcome of its murder investigation.Arafat's widow, Suha,skin analyzer has little doubt that murder was involved, telling Reuters, "We are revealing a real crime, a political assassination."As leader of the Palestinian Authority, he had control over vast sums of money, particularly aid from foreign governments. Arafat's widow tells Reuters that the polonium must have been administered by someone "in his close circle" because experts had told her the poison would have been put in his coffee, tea or water. She did not accuse any country or person and noted that he had many enemies.

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