The body of the former President of the Palestinian National Authority, Yasser Arafat, was exhumed from the tomb to determine the cause of his death. The expertise will be conducted by specialists from various countries, including Russia.
The exhumation took place in the Palestinian city of Ramallah without bystanders and journalists. After sampling, the body of Arafat will be returned to the mausoleum with honor, the Russian News Service said.
The President of the Palestinian National Authority, a long-time leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Yasser Arafat, who received a Nobel Prize for his participation in peace talks with Israel, died in November of 2004 at a military hospital near Paris, where he had been taken in serious condition from his residence in the West Bank of Jordan.
The cause of his death has not been established yet. His health worsened all of a sudden, which gave rise to rumors that he was poisoned. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad accused Israeli intelligence services in 2006 of the murder of the Palestinian leader. In the summer of 2012, Al Jazeera TV channel unveiled the results of its own journalistic investigation, which lasted for nine months. Specialists of the Swiss Institute of Radiophysics in Lausanne studied personal belongings of the politician: his clothes, a toothbrush, which he used before his death. The scientists also examined the blood, urine and sweat of the late leader of Palestine, Gazeta said.
As a result, the scientists discovered a high content of radioactive element polonium-210 in the samples. The substance could trigger the dramatic and still inexplicable deterioration of his health. The content of the radioactive substance was 10 times higher than normal, adds RBC.