Palestinians get Swiss results on Arafat remains
Palestinian authorities have received the reports of Swiss and Russian forensic investigations into the 2004 death of Yasser Arafat, an official said on Tuesday, without disclosing the findings.
"The report was delivered" by the Swiss laboratory, Tawfiq Tirawi, who heads the Palestinian investigation into Arafat's death, told AFP.
When contacted, the lab in Lausanne declined to comment on the matter.
Last month, radiation experts in the Swiss city said polonium was found on Arafat's clothes.
In a report published by The Lancet, a British medical journal, they provided detailed evidence of the substance, saying the findings "support the possibility of Arafat's poisoning by polonium 210".
But a spokeswoman from the Vaudois University Hospital Centre (CHUV) said then that there was "still no conclusion that he was poisoned".
Official Palestinian news agency WAFA said that a Russian team appointed by the Palestinian Authority also handed in its report on November 2nd and that its conclusions would be made public in due course.
Some 60 samples were taken from the remains of the late Palestinian leader in November last year for a probe into whether he was poisoned by polonium.
The samples were divided between the Swiss and Russian investigators and a French team carrying out a probe at the request of Arafat's widow Suha.
Arafat died in hospital in France on November 11th 2004 at the age of 75, but doctors were unable to specify the cause of death.
No autopsy was carried out at the time, in line with his widow's request, something which has hampered efforts to determine the cause of his death.
Arafat's remains were exhumed from his tomb in the West Bank city of Ramallah in November 2012 and samples taken, partly to investigate whether he had been poisoned — a suspicion that grew after the assassination of Russian ex-spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
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"The report was delivered" by the Swiss laboratory, Tawfiq Tirawi, who heads the Palestinian investigation into Arafat's death, told AFP.
When contacted, the lab in Lausanne declined to comment on the matter.
Last month, radiation experts in the Swiss city said polonium was found on Arafat's clothes.
In a report published by The Lancet, a British medical journal, they provided detailed evidence of the substance, saying the findings "support the possibility of Arafat's poisoning by polonium 210".
But a spokeswoman from the Vaudois University Hospital Centre (CHUV) said then that there was "still no conclusion that he was poisoned".
Official Palestinian news agency WAFA said that a Russian team appointed by the Palestinian Authority also handed in its report on November 2nd and that its conclusions would be made public in due course.
Some 60 samples were taken from the remains of the late Palestinian leader in November last year for a probe into whether he was poisoned by polonium.
The samples were divided between the Swiss and Russian investigators and a French team carrying out a probe at the request of Arafat's widow Suha.
Arafat died in hospital in France on November 11th 2004 at the age of 75, but doctors were unable to specify the cause of death.
No autopsy was carried out at the time, in line with his widow's request, something which has hampered efforts to determine the cause of his death.
Arafat's remains were exhumed from his tomb in the West Bank city of Ramallah in November 2012 and samples taken, partly to investigate whether he had been poisoned — a suspicion that grew after the assassination of Russian ex-spy and Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.
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