YASSER ARAFAT WAS POISONED?

We have seen that Israel has a long history of using poisons and biological agents against its enemies. That includes the near-assassination of Khaled Meshal in Amman in 1997 by Mossad agents who sprayed levofentanyl into his ear and the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabouh in Dubai in 2010, in which succinylcholine was injected into him, immobilizing him as he was suffocated. The fallout of this discovery could be rather momentous. Love him or hate him, such an assassination is criminal from the onset.

Israeli reporter, Uri Dan in 2007:

"I remember several years ago when Ehud Olmert was Sharon’s right-hand man and threatened Arafat with assassination in the pages of the Jerusalem Post. I had the strange feeling that if Sharon & Co. were willing to threaten to do it they were fully prepared to do it. Now, it appears they figured out a way to do it that would eliminate their fingerprints. Perhaps a polonium cocktail?"

Araminta Wordsworth 

Jul 5, 2012

REUTERS / Mohammed Salem

The news Yasser Arafat may have been poisoned with polonium-210 comes like a bombshell. But it could finally explain how the Palestinian leader died ~ and perhaps start to heal relations between Palestinians and Israel. Or maybe not.

Doctors at the hospital in Paris where Arafat was treated have always refused to release any details, citing privacy concerns. Now tests carried out in Switzerland at the behest of Arab television station Al Jazeera and his widow appear to confirm he was poisoned by the lethal radioactive isotope.

Though minuscule amounts of polonium can be bought over the Internet, it is hard to source in quantity ~ you’d need access to a nuclear reactor, which implies dodgy security and/or official involvement.

Arafat’s fate also recalls that of Alexander Litvinenko, the former KGB agent, who died in London in 2006 after drinking tea laced with polonium. British police believe it was a Kremlin-

In an editorial, the Abu Dhabi-based National newspaper points out the use of polonium suggest some kind of government operation.

Polonium is an improbable murder weapon, hard to use and tricky to obtain. It is also very rare, and it is difficult to imagine how Arafat’s belongings could have become contaminated under innocent circumstances.

Such contamination inevitably brings to mind [the Litvinenko case]. Almost eight years after Arafat’s death, then, polonium 210 is immediately associated with cloak-and-dagger intrigue and political assassination. But in this case, there are now more questions than answers …

There will be no shortage of speculation about who would have wanted him dead, but far better would be to wait for further evidence, and to insist that the investigation proceed … If it can be proved that Arafat was killed by radioactive poisoning, there can only be a handful of possible suspects.

At Israel’s Ynetnews, Ron Ben-Yishai, Nahum Barnea and Sever Plocker weigh up the evidence for any connection with Israel (possessor of the only nuclear reactor in the Middle East ~ so far) and finger Ariel Sharon.

On the face of it, there are quite a few reasons to believe that Arafat died of natural causes. Israeli spokespeople strongly denied that Israel was involved in the affair. It was a decisive, unequivocal denial that was not accompanied by a wink, as was the case in other unexplained Mideast deaths …

On the other hand, there is no doubt that Arafat’s death came at a rather odd timing. [Ariel] Sharon was the one who decided upon assuming the post of prime minister to change Israel’s approach, asserting that the Palestinian Authority is part of the problem, rather than the solution, and that Arafat is an enemy.

If Sharon indeed ordered Arafat’s assassination, this must have been done very secretly, in much smaller forums than any other assassination.

Mark Peplow, a blogger for the magazine Nature, details the procedures followed by the Swiss researchers.

The scientists mixed samples of cloth with a solvent to extract any lingering radioisotopes. They washed this solution on to a silver disc, which absorbs the isotopes, and tested it using alpha-particle spectroscopy. 

They also conducted control experiments using items of Arafat’s clothing that he had not worn after falling ill.

Interview with Arafat's wife

A sample of urine-stained underwear showed polonium-210 radioactivity of 180 millibequerels (mBq) ~ roughly one radioactive decay every five seconds. A control sample had a radioactivity of about 10 mBq. [Swiss scientist Dr. Laurent] Bochud says that naturally occurring polonium-210 ~ resulting from the decay of radon gas, for example ~ normally causes a radioactivity of about 5 mBq per litre of urine.

Polonium-210 has a half-life of about 138 days, so about 20 half-lives had passed between Arafat’s death and the testing in Lausanne.

This means the amount of polonium in Arafat’s body would have been about a million times greater when he died, similar to the levels found in Litvinenko, they conclude.

Skeptics have pointed about small amounts of polonium are available by mail order in the U.S. But, as a posting at MSNBC’s Cosmic Log noted soon after the Litvinenko poisoning,

The amount is key. We might notice no ill results from billionths of a curie (which serves as a measure of activity). In contrast, Litvinenko is thought to have been exposed to something around five millicuries (thousandths of a curie), said Kelly Classic, associate editor for media relations at the Health Physics Society.

That’s a minute amount ~ a speck of polonium that active would weigh less than a millionth of a gram, according to the Health Physics Society’s information sheet on polonium; getting that much polonium together would probably require going to the source, which usually involves a nuclear reactor. This is why investigators are thinking the hit on Litvinenko was a high-level spy-vs-spy job.

Ditto Arafat. The exhumation of his body from his tomb in Ramallah could finally clear up the mystery.