RAMALLAH, West Bank — Investigators from France and Switzerland will conduct parallel probes into the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Palestinian officials said Monday. His remains will be exhumed, at a date kept secret, to give each team a chance to draw samples to test for poisoning.
The two teams are acting separately on behalf of Arafat’s widow Suha Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, who each had misgivings about the other’s investigation.
The push to re-examine Arafat’s 2004 death comes after a Swiss lab’s recent discovery of polonium-210, a deadly radioactive isotope, on clothes said to belong to the Palestinian leader. This fueled new suspicions of poisoning.
Suha Arafat has long had rocky relations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and the probes’ potential to be politically explosive appears to have fueled more distrust. She had asked the Palestinian Authority to suspend any other probe or ensure that it was coordinated with the French investigation. Some Palestinian officials, for their part, said they were unhappy with the way Suha Arafat had forced a foreign investigation on them.
Keeping the event a secret will likely be a challenge. Arafat lies in a giant mausoleum built by the Palestinians outside government headquarters in a central area of Ramallah.
