(Image source: Wikimedia Commons )

BY CHRISTINA HARTMAN

Yasser Arafat’s death in 2004 has long been fertile ground for conspiracy theorists, but Al Jazeera’s nine-month investigation into the cause of his death suggests the Palestinian leader may have been poisoned.

SCIENTIST: “We did find some significant polonium that was present in this sample.” … REPORTER: “Unsupported polonium, the kind made in a nuclear reactor. ... An amount not visible to the human eye will kill you.”

Al Jazeera had Swiss scientists test artifacts belonging to the late leader. And while levels of polonium were found, they stressed without exhuming the body the findings are not enough to come to any definite conclusions.  

It was polonium, a rare and highly-radioactive element, that killed former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006.

Arafat died in a hospital in France. And while unconfirmed reports at the time suggested he died of AIDS , the Al Jazeera investigation suggests Arafat was in good health up until his sudden illness about a month before he died.

No autopsy was performed at the time and conspiracy theories have floated for years.

A 2005 report from Israel’s Haaretz newspaper tied the poison and AIDS theories together.

“Arafat’s personal physician insists that a test ... found AIDS in his blood. ... To heighten the mystery, he also maintains that Arafat was poisoned and that the AIDS virus ... ‘was injected into his body in order to camouflage the poisoning.’”

Long before Al Jazeera’s polonium report though, early suspicions pointed to Israel. Though it’s worth noting Israel’s Foreign Ministry has long denied involvement in the Palestinian leader’s death the Telegraph’s Adrian Blomfield says , the investigation is likely to get fingers pointing in Israel’s direction again. But he also notes...

“Some of Arafat's symptoms, including vomiting, cirrhosis and coma, are compatible with Polonium-210 poisoning ... But it is not thought that Arafat suffered hair loss, which is thought to happen in half of cases of significant exposure to the element.”

Polonium has a half-life of 138 days. Al Jazeera reports, Arafat’s widow is expected to request her late husband’s body to be exhumed for an inquest.