Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was not poisoned

28 Dec rappler.com

A Russian probe into the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has found no trace of radioactive poisoning a finding that comes after a French probe found traces of the radioactive isotope polonium and a Swiss investigation said the timeframe of his illness and death was consistent with that of polonium poisoning. Vladimir Uiba, the head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency, said on Thursday that Arafat died of natural causes and the agency had no plans to conduct further tests.

Teams of scientists from France, Switzerland and Russia were asked to determine whether polonium, a rare and extremely lethal substance, played a role in Arafat's death in a French military hospital in 2004.

French experts found traces of polonium but said it was "of natural environmental origin," according to Arafat's widow, Suha Arafat.

Swiss scientists, meanwhile, said they found elevated traces of polonium-210 and lead, and that the timeframe of Arafat's illness and death was consistent with poisoning from ingesting polonium. Uiba spoke at a news conference on Thursday. In October, he was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying that Arafat "could not have been poisoned by polonium" and that "traces of such a substance were not found."

It was not immediately clear how the three investigations could have come up with different conclusions.