Tests conducted in Paris previously found no obvious traces of poison in former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s system yet a nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera news has revealed that none of those rumours of being injected with HIV or having cancer are true. Instead it has revealed that Arafat was in good health until he suddenly fell ill on October 12, 2004 but that his clothing has high levels of polonium. According to Al Jazeera, tests reveal that his final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, his iconic kaffiyeh – contained "abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element". Analysed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, the tests carried out on samples of suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died. “I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids,” said Dr. Francois Bochud, the director of the institute.
