
Swiss forensic report on Arafat's death - jdmitch
http://www.aljazeera.com/investigations/killing-arafat/swiss-forensic-report-arafat-death-201311671255163780.html
======
ISL
An impressive read; that's a tough job to take on. No matter the quality of
the researcher's work, someone, somewhere, is going to be inflamed by the
conclusion.

It's also a super fun job to take on. Nuclear measurements can be very
perceptive. Everyone I know in the business loves to have meaningful
applications in the wider world. Our lab was a fun place to be immediately
following Fukushima [1] (and Chernobyl, too, but that's before my time as a
physicist).

On the scale of technical reports, it's well-written, and intended to be read
by semi-technical readers. The analysis covers a lot of ground on sources of
uncertainty. They do a reasonable job handling uncertainties on the things I
know about, and my only remaining concerns extend beyond my expertise.

It's a worthy read; check it out!

(as a bonus, in the appendices, you get to see photos of everything in the
travel bag.)

[1]
[http://www.npl.washington.edu/monitoring/node/1](http://www.npl.washington.edu/monitoring/node/1)

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Mikeb85
Of course Yasser Arafat was killed. I don't think anyone sane ever thought
otherwise considering the circumstances... Same goes for Slobodan Milosevic...
There likely are others, but they don't come to mind at the moment.

Love the anonymous downvote for saying something unpopular politically, but
more than likely factually correct.

Dangerous political prisoners/personalities dying in mysterious circumstances
at opportune times is not coincidence. The US reign death from above via
remote controlled drones and this isn't contested, yet thinking that very
suspicious deaths at expedient times are likely assassinations is some crazy
conspiracy theory...

~~~
pjbrow
At the risk of getting down voted on what is an emotional issue for a lot of
people, here's my (quite realist) view.

I was living in the West Bank when Arafat died, and I knew a bunch of people
who worked in his compound. He got very sick, very quickly. The doctors around
him were baffled by the steep decline, which is why he was flown to France
just before he died.

I acknowledge that my theory on the issue is purely circumstantial, but a good
place to start with these things is "qui bono?". Ariel Sharon (and Israel, and
in my view, everyone) had a lot to gain by Arafat's death.

Whatever you think of the nastiness that he'd been involved in, Sharon was a
remarkable human - Israelis aren't given to overstatement and they called him
the "Lion of God".

Sharon was clearly making a dash for a grand bargain, and it's obvious that
the "bulldozer" (another of his nicknames) wasn't letting anything get in his
way.

By pure force of will, he withdrew Israel from Gaza (an absolutely wrenching
move for Israel to make), and then left Likud to establish Kadimah so that he
could move forward without blockage from the right wing radicals in his old
party. In a very short time frame, Sharon bent a famously fractious Israeli
parliament into a position to make a grand bargain that would stick - the last
major road block to a bargain was Arafat.

Israel had had a real go at negotiating with Arafat with Bill Clinton at Camp
David. It didn't work out. Of course, there are a bunch of conflicting
opinions on who's to blame for the breakdown in talks, but the basic,
unarguable outcome was that Arafat wasn't willing to take Israel's best offer.

Sharon obviously knew that, and also knew that Arafat's successor was going to
be the comparatively mild mannered Abbas, who Sharon was already dealing with
constructively. I think Sharon basically decided that, given Arafat's previous
form, he was a very high risk as a grand bargain spoiler - Arafat's moral
authority with the Palestinian population remained high. So, in the absence of
any other option (since Arafat was essentially a dictator), good night Arafat.

If you think that Sharon wasn't capable of something that cold, take a look at
his conduct in the massacre at Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre)).

Sharon had a stroke shortly thereafter, and with that, arguably the only
person capable of cutting the gordian knot in the medium term was out of the
picture. Gotta love ash-sharq al-awsat.

~~~
cynicalkane
They call Ariel Sharon "Lion of God" because Ariel means Lion of God in
Hebrew.

~~~
pjbrow
Thanks, I didn't know that. According to Wikipedia, another of his nicknames
amongst Israelis was "The King of Israel". That moniker at least, indicates
that he was regarded as a formidable character.

------
dodyg
Yasser Arafat was a known quantity both to the US and the Israeli for at least
30 years. There was little incentive to kill him at this stage of his life
(unlike in 1982) - and I doubt it brought any significant tactical benefits to
do so.

I would bet that the poisoning was ordered by someone within the factions of
Palestinian struggles.

~~~
MrZongle2
I think this is a very good point. Of all the actors who would interact with
Arafat, what motivated one of them to (presumably) kill him in Summer/Fall
2004?

Also curious: why did his wife refuse to permit an autopsy?

~~~
Mikeb85
> Also curious: why did his wife refuse to permit an autopsy?

Islam has fairly strict burial customs, and many Islamic clerics have outlawed
autopsies. It isn't a universal belief, but likely figured into the
equation...

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nnq
_Why_ would anyone use Polonium 210 as a poisoning agent?

...I don't know that much about poisons, but I bet the people in this lob have
whole arsenal of "stealth" poisons that could much more easily go unnoticed.
And if you want to make it obvious, why not go for something even more obvious
or simply a bullet?

It seems more like an "artist's signature" thing and it would be interesting
to know who this "artist" is!

~~~
Xylakant
> Why would anyone use Polonium 210 as a poisoning agent?

It's a very rare agent that only very few assassins have access to, so most
routine poison searches would not pick it up. Especially since the symptoms
are basically nondescript. In addition to that polonium was pretty much
unknown as a poison when Arafat was killed - the high profile Litvinenko
killing was after Arafats death. The lethal dose is extremely low and even if
it is detected, there's no antidote.

That's a pretty good stealth poison in my book.

~~~
moioci
Wikipedia says chelation with mercaptopurine has been effective in mice. Not
sure how quickly it would have to be given, though. (Wikipedia says biological
half-life is 30 - 50 days.)

~~~
Xylakant
Probably before the onset of the worst symptoms. Basically the cause of death
is massive radiation poisoning and all the symptoms are radiation sickness
symptoms, i.e. tissue damage.

------
dmix
The choice of poison is suspicious:

"Notably, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident, in 2006 was
announced as due to Polonium poisoning."

"According to the book The Bomb in the Basement, several deaths in Israel
during 1957–1969 were caused by Polonium."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Well-
known_poisoning_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Well-
known_poisoning_cases)

~~~
e12e
Wouldn't it be interesting if Litvinenko wasn't killed by the Russians after
all, but the hit was contracted out to/preformed by Mossad... I really doubt
that, but I wasn't aware there'd been such use of Polonium previously.

~~~
dmix
Well, the Russian poisoning happened _after_ the Mossad poisoning. The person
who killed Litvinenko had time to learn from whomever killed Mossad.

Russian agents learning from Israel perhaps.

~~~
yaakov34
Where for God's sake are you even getting "Mossad" and "poisoning"? There was
apparently a radioactive leak at the Weizmann Institute in 1957. Professor
Dror Sadeh, in whose laboratory it happened, died of cancer in 1993, i.e. 35
years later. Another researcher died of cancer in 1969 and someone else died
of leukemia a month after the leak (which means it was probably unrelated to
that specific incident). Sure, exposure to radiation in the laboratory, and
not just that particular leak, must have elevated their cancer risk. Cancer
deaths are pretty common among early nuclear researchers. But elevated risk of
cancer years later is not the same as radiation poisoning. And the Weizmann
Institute is not the Mossad.

~~~
dmix
Oops I meant to say "Arafat poisoning" not "Mossad poisoning" in my original
comment. I can no longer edit it. I don't have any solid evidence/source for
Israel's involvement, just weird coincidence that they came up on Wikipedia.
Purely speculation.

------
gadders
I'm not convinced he was assassinated, but I won't shed any tears if he was.
He was an evil terrorist with blood on his hands who also managed to rip off
his own people to the tune of more than a billion dollars. Good riddance.

~~~
JonFish85
Are you implying that a Nobel Peace Prize winner was, in fact, corrupt?!

(Said sarcastically)

~~~
alan_cx
Doesn't Obama have one of those?

~~~
steveax
Not to mention Kissinger, cough.

------
jdmitch
Interesting that on p. 59 they discuss the theory that the Po-210 was because
of smoking, as smokers have twice as much. Conclusion: smoking still wouldn't
account for the total amount in some samples, and he wasn't a smoker anyways.

------
ucha
There is no motive to the use of Polonium 210.

It was used on Alexander Litvinenko because the Russians wanted to show that
they were able and willing to take the life of former agents that attacked
their interests.

What motivates the use of a radioactive element that very few possess?

~~~
hedgie13
> It was used on Alexander Litvinenko because the Russians wanted to show that
> they were able and willing to take the life of former agents that attacked
> their interests.

Or maybe not. It is very well known that Russian security services brutally
murdered Litvinenko, but there is remarkably little evidence. The only
evidence, in fact, is that "everyone knows it". What if new data will make you
reconsider this well known wisdom?

> What motivates the use of a radioactive element that very few possess?

It is very widely used and easily available.

~~~
ucha
Widely used? Easily available? Where and by who?

~~~
bashinator
Right here, by anybody in the U.S.

[http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cP...](http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_5&products_id=819)

~~~
capnrefsmmat
You'd need thousands of those button sources to make a lethal dose of Po-210.

[http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-
sheets/po...](http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-
sheets/polonium.html)

> They are typically in a form that, if ingested, would pose no health
> problem, and the radiation is so small that they do not pose a hazard even
> if the polonium were to be absorbed. It would take 30,000 of these exempt
> quantities to represent the 3-millicurie fatal dose estimate.

Button sources are typically of the size where you wouldn't mind letting
undergrads gnaw on them during their physics labs. The worst they could do is
choke.

------
auctiontheory
What's remarkable about Arafat's death is that it came as late in his life
(75!) as it did.

Fun fact: I went to school in a building which later became the PLO Embassy.

------
MichaelMoser123
And in Russia they did a parallel investigation that shows no polonium. So as
usual, every side of the conflict can pick its own narrative.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-palestinians-
ar...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-palestinians-arafat-
russia-idUSBRE99E0LN20131015)

~~~
kissickas
Did you read the first sentence of that article?

"However, the government scientific body later denied that it had made any
official statement about the research, saying only that it had handed its
results to the Russian Foreign Ministry."

------
QuasiAlon
Here's is what I know and hold to be true from following the story over the
years:

Quite a few high ranking sources in Israel insinuated he died of AIDS. He
contracted the disease in the '80s. He was a homosexual and the Israeli
intelligence is rumored to have videotaped proof.

Israel had no reason to poison him. After the Karine A affair
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karine_A_Affair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karine_A_Affair)
Arafat's reputation was tarnished beyond repair with Western leaders. In later
2004 the intifada was mostly mitigated already. He was no longer a threat
politically or militarily. Israel knew he was dying anyway and if you go back
and read news reports you can see that over years he received quite a few
treatments overseas for cover up diseases.

~~~
chc
It's very coincidental that somebody would die of AIDS at the same time he had
a lethal dose of polonium in his system.

~~~
ars
If he actually had any polonium.... Because apparently other investigators
found none.

~~~
varjag
It is addressed in the opening part of the report. At least give it a shot
before debunking.

------
throwmeaway2525
So strange--I went to see what, if anything, Gérard de Villiers had written
about the situation, and noticed he just died.

That always happens. I'll try not to think of anyone here.

------
badwetter
Considering that this material is supposed to degrade quickly - to find the
amount they did after so long in the ground is incredible sleuth work.

~~~
ars
It's not "incredible sleuth work" it's completely impossible - the background
radiation is more than what's left.

~~~
badwetter
false

------
arjn
Just putting this out there - what if Arafat's body was contaminated after he
died .... so that there would be a controversy later and some target could be
blamed ? Say it was done just within the few minutes or hours after he died,
could the polonium be absorbed into his body far enough that it would look
like he was poisoned ?

