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PARIS: France has made a formal request to the Palestinian authorities for cooperation with their investigation into the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a judicial source said Tuesday.
The move is designed to clear the way for a panel of judges to visit Arafat’s mausoleum in the West Bank city of Ramallah as part of a probe into claims he was poisoned with the radioactive substance polonium.
Arafat died aged 75 in France in November 2004 and French doctors were unable to say what had killed him.
Many Palestinians are convinced he was poisoned by Israel. French prosecutors opened a murder inquiry in August after Al-Jazeera television broadcast an investigation in which Swiss experts said they had found high levels of radioactive polonium on Arafat’s personal effects.
The French probe followed a request by Arafat’s widow Suha, but it has caused a split within the family, with the veteran leader’s nephew Nasser al-Qidwa condemning plans to exhume the body for tests as “a hateful idea”.
The move is designed to clear the way for a panel of judges to visit Arafat’s mausoleum in the West Bank city of Ramallah as part of a probe into claims he was poisoned with the radioactive substance polonium.
Arafat died aged 75 in France in November 2004 and French doctors were unable to say what had killed him.
Many Palestinians are convinced he was poisoned by Israel. French prosecutors opened a murder inquiry in August after Al-Jazeera television broadcast an investigation in which Swiss experts said they had found high levels of radioactive polonium on Arafat’s personal effects.
The French probe followed a request by Arafat’s widow Suha, but it has caused a split within the family, with the veteran leader’s nephew Nasser al-Qidwa condemning plans to exhume the body for tests as “a hateful idea”.
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