Arafat did not die of poisoning, French tests conclude

[question everything]

Source: Reuters

Yasser Arafat was not the victim of poisoning, French forensic scientists concluded on Tuesday, countering a Swiss report on the 2004 death of the Palestinian leader that found he was probably killed with radioactive polonium. The French conclusions were immediately challenged by his widow, Suha Arafat, who has argued the death was a political assassination by someone close to her husband. A senior Palestinian official dismissed the report as "politicized".

(snip)

Swiss forensic experts stirred controversy last month by announcing that results from their tests of samples taken from Arafat's body were consistent with polonium poisoning, while not absolute proof of the cause of death. The report handed to Suha Arafat will not be published, but the French public prosecutor's office said it concluded: "In sum, death was not due to poisoning with Polonium 210...

"Measurements of Polonium 210 and other radioactive substances taken from biological samples of the body are consistent with a natural environmental origin." That could lead the magistrates to close the case, unless they have other incriminating evidence.

(snip)

The French report concluded that some of the radioactivity could be explained by the presence of radon gas in the tomb where Arafat was buried. The Swiss experts said on the contrary that the level of radon gas was due to the radioactivity in his body.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/03/us-palestinians-arafat-idUSBRE9B20DI20131203

[Warpy]

1. If he used tobacco, that could explain the earlier test

Tobacco has an affinity for polonium in the soil. In fact, the first report about that came out years before the Surgeon General's report on the epidemiology linking smoking with cancer.

I remember the period just before that when scientists who knew what ionizing radiation did to the human body struggled to quit smoking.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

2. Sleeping next to someone exposes you to radiation:

Sleeping next to someone for a night exposes you to 0.05 microSieverts.

Eating a banana: 0.1 microSieverts.

[grantcart]

12. Sleeping in a tomb also exposes you to radiation.

[2naSalit]

3. The French have been

really friendly with Israel lately too. I don't buy it.

[SkyDaddy7]

4. This should put an end to this...

But it won't for some who want so badly for Arafat to have been poisoned.

[Festivito]

5. Perhaps the French are embarrassed and protecting Israel among possibly others.

If it were Radon degrading in the grave, the resultant isotopes would be outside the body, not inside. (Unless he was still breathing and eating while dead.) So, they would know where the distribution of which isotopes are in which areas of his body. This is not being covered in the article.

The article seems written to hide something. Note the use of ellipses to cut short an important sentence. Also there is a sentence using a In sum, instead of in summary, or to sum.

This smells. I'm gaining trust in the Swiss report and losing trust in the French. I'm thinking that they just want to give an impression to readers that it will be okay to stop further investigation in France -- before they cannot control the situation any longer.

Also, we have another take in DU's LBN.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014662202
A more provocative DU title that goes to the same article, not following DU rules about LBN titling.

Odd that no one seemed to notice that author's post.

[question everything]

6. I always search before I post. Especially on LBN

I did find this story and the title is

"Investigator says close to naming people behind Arafat's death"

I hope that neither I, nor anyone else on DU will need to explain to you the difference between the two.

[Festivito]

7. You have the correct title. They did not. They were not in compliance. You are.

I thought that was clear in my prior post.

[azurnoir]

14. I should make this clear

Reuters has a long and known history of changing titles and entire articles after they publish them, there for the title was very accurate at the time the thread was posted and in fact seeing that this thread was posted afterwards it is a duplicate and there for could be locked -thanks for pointing this out I would not have noticed otherwise

[Pterodactyl]

8. Makes sense. I always found it hard to believe that Hamas would have poisoned him.

[Scairp]

17. This was a snipe hunt

It made zero sense as he had no symptoms of radiation poisoning before he died. He would have been very ill, all his hair would have fallen out and he would have looked like a cancer patient undergoing intense chemo. Much too much ado about nothing. Besides, no one would have waited until he was an old man to kill him with some rare kind of radioactive poison. I think the people who declared he had been poisoned have been reading too many John Le Carre novels.

[Fozzledick]

9. Lee Harvey Oswald did it alone!!1!

Anyone who says otherwise is just a deluded conspiracy theorist!

[OrwellwasRight]

13. Excellent one! I was going to go with:

Arafat's dead?!?!?!

[Fozzledick]

16. Or the old Saturday Night Live routine...

Breaking news: French forensic scientists concluded on Tuesday that Yasser Arafat is still dead!

[OrwellwasRight]

18. Oh that reminds me of:

[AverageJoe90]

10. Case closed.

Indeed, Arafat was not poisoned by massive amounts of polonium, just as Lee Harvey Oswald did *not* act totally alone in JFK's assassination.

And I am *NOT* being sarcastic either way, btw.

[hughee99]

11. If only they'd put in as much time and effort into recovering the estimated $1-3 billion

he "appropriated" from his own people.

[Archae]

15. Israel had every reason to keep Arafat alive.

Arafat was brutal, corrupt as hell, had his opponents lynched, and stole BILLIONS of $$$ that should have gone to the Palestinians.
Arafat alive was someone Israel could point to as a typical Palestinian, corrupt, deceptive and brutal.

Arafat had lots of his own people wanting him dead.
Lots of Arabs wanted him dead.
Hezbollah wanted him dead.