Remains of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have been exhumed in Ramallah, in the West Bank, to help determine the cause of his death.
Sources told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that the remains were moved out of Arafat’s mausoleum and taken to a mosque, where Palestinian doctors are currently collecting samples for handing over to international teams from France, Russia and Switzerland.
Three doctors, three forensic experts, the health minister, the justice minister, and heads of the lawyers and doctors syndicates are present during the exhumation, the sources said.
Reporting from Ramallah, Al Jazeera’s Clayton Swisher also said that the Palestian attorney general, with the help of French prosecutors, has started interviewing dozens of Palestinian officials close to Arafat about the conditions the leader was living under before his death in 2004.
Three teams of international investigators travelled on Monday to the muqataa, the Palestinian Authority (PA) headquarters, where Arafat is buried.
They could be seen bringing equipment to the site throughout the day.
A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera found elevated levels of the substance in Arafat’s final personal effects.
The findings, which were broadcast in July, suggest that there was also a high level of polonium in Arafat’s body when he died, raising fresh questions about what killed the longtime Palestinian leader.
The cause of Arafat’s death has long remained a mystery.
Some reports speculated that he died from AIDS, cirrhosis of the liver, or other diseases, but medical experts who studied his final medical records told Al Jazeera that he was in good health until he suddenly fell ill in October of 2004.
Many Palestinians have long believed that Arafat was poisoned by Israel, a charge Tirawi repeated during a press conference here on Saturday.
French legal experts have also begun to gather evidence on the case in preparation for a possible trial, including testimony from people in the West Bank, according to Palestinian officials.
The teams are operating under a near-media blackout imposed by the PA, which had promised a transparent and open investigation.
None of the investigators contacted over the past few days were willing to speak on the record.
And late on Monday, the PA said it would not allow lawyers representing Arafat’s widow, Suha, to attend the exhumation, without offering any reason for its decision.
On Monday night, workers with hand tools drilled through more than four metres of concrete over Arafat’s body. Investigators have collected several samples on the way down to look at polonium levels.
The whole process was to take about 10 hours.
French, Swiss and Russian scientists
The French team includes three scientists – a toxicologist, a pathologist and a generalist who works on legal medicine.
The Swiss team, from the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, conducted the forensic analysis in the initial investigation.
The PA also asked experts from Russia to conduct their own independent analysis. “One of them is from an organisation dealing with judicial medical experts, and the others are specialists connected to radiation,” a source familiar with the Russian team said.
Only a handful of officials from the PA and Fatah were on hand for the exhumation. Arafat’s family was not present, according to Palestinian officials.
It is unclear what condition Arafat’s body will be in eight years after his death.
Samples collected from bones and organs offer the best chance of finding evidence of polonium.
Al Jazeera’s investigation studied the items Arafat had with him when he died: his comb, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh, all of which were variously stained with his blood, sweat, saliva and urine.
The items were provided by Suha Arafat.
Arafat’s belongings were analysed by the Institut de Radiophysique, which discovered high levels of polonium-210. Further tests found that most of the polonium was “unsupported,” which means that it did not come from natural sources.
But, even if it is present on Arafat’s body, very little of the radioactive element will remain at this point. Polonium-210, the isotope found on his personal effects, has a half-life of 138 days, meaning that half of the substance will decay every four-and-a-half months.
Scientists say that eight years is about the limit for recovering a useful sample, and a longer delay would have made it impossible to recover a workable sample.
In an interview with Al Jazeera on Tuesday, Dr Rebecca Hsu, a forensic pathologist based in Arizona in the United States, described the complexity of the task facing investigators.
“Exhumations are always extremely difficult,” Hsu said. “You are dealing with the added problem that a time period has passed now.”
“While there are many things that can be found, there’s quite a bit that can’t be determined at this time,” she said, adding that investigators “must be very cautious” in how the body is removed and how samples are obtained “so that nothing that wasn’t present initially is then added and perhaps mistaken for the original damage.”
‘Certain people in certain positions’
It will take months for the scientists to finish analysing the samples they collect. Researchers will have to wait through at least one half-life to study the decay in their samples: Natural polonium replenishes itself after decaying, while unsupported polonium does not.
Once they finish their work, the French courts will determine how to proceed. Arafat died in a French military hospital, giving the French legal system jurisdiction over the case.
Suha Arafat asked a French court to open a murder investigation earlier this year, and the court granted that request in August. A team of French judges has already begun collecting Arafat’s medical records and other evidence.
The group interviewed Suha Arafat earlier this month. Tirawi also said that the investigators have gathered testimony in the West Bank from “certain people, in certain positions”, but declined to offer any detail about their identities.
The French team has refused to speak to the press, and a team of Palestinian and French security agents prevented reporters from approaching them in their hotel.
Even members of the Swiss team, which worked with Al Jazeera on the initial investigation earlier this year, were unwilling to comment on the exhumation, citing restrictions from the PA.
Palestinian security officers have tailed Al Jazeera reporters in cars and on foot, and at one point broke into the network’s hotel rooms.
“They publicly praise Al Jazeera for the investigative breakthrough that breathed life into what was otherwise a very cold case, while at the same time they chase us around Ramallah to keep us from doing our jobs,” said Al Jazeera’s Clayton Swisher, who produced the investigation.
Source: Al Jazeera And Agencies
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