Widow maintains former Palestinian leader’s death in 2004 was result of polonium poisoning but prosecutor says ‘sufficient evidence’ not found

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

French judges investigating claims that the former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was murdered have closed the case without bringing any charges.

“At the end of the investigation … it has not been demonstrated that Mr Yasser Arafat was murdered by polonium-210 poisoning,” according to a statement from the prosecutor from the court in Nanterre, near Paris.

Arafat died aged 75, in Percy military hospital near Paris in November 2004, after developing stomach pains while at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

His widow, Suha, has maintained he was poisoned, possibly by radioactive polonium-210. Levels of the radioactive isotope at least 18 times higher than normal were found in his remains.

But the investigating judges ruled on Wednesday there was “not sufficient evidence of an intervention by a third party who could have attempted to take his life,” the prosecutor said.

Suha’s lawyer, Francis Szpiner, also announced the judges’ decision on Twitter:

Francis Szpiner (@fszpiner) Les juges de Nanterre viennent de rendre une ordonnance de non lieu dans l 'affaire de la mort de Yasser Arafat.

Suha filed the murder case in 2012 at the Nanterre court. The same year, Arafat’s tomb in Ramallah was opened for a few hours to allow three teams of French, Swiss and Russian investigators to collect about 60 samples.

The French judges concluded their investigations in April and sent their findings to the Nanterre prosecutor, who recommended in July that the case be dropped.

A laboratory in the Swiss city of Lausanne had tested biological samples taken from Arafat’s belongings that were given to his widow after his death. Toxicologists said they found “abnormal levels of polonium”, but stopped short of saying that he had been poisoned by the substance.

Experts found that the isotopes polonium-210 and lead-210, found in Arafat’s grave and in the samples, were of “an environmental nature”, the Nanterre prosecutor, Catherine Denis, said in April.

The head of the Palestinian Authority’s inquiry committee refused to accept the judges’ conclusions. “We’ll continue our investigation to reach the killer of Arafat until we know how Arafat was killed,” Tawfiq Tirawi told AFP.

Lawyers for Arafat’s widow accused the judges of closing the investigation too quickly and called for more experts to be questioned.