The exhumation of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, and the testing of the remains might not resolve the mystery of his death.
Polonium-210 decomposes rapidly, and some experts say it is not clear whether any remaining samples will be sufficient for testing. It is a rare radioactive element, many times more toxic than other poisons such as cyanide. Its most famous confirmed victim was Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian dissident and former spy who, according to a British inquiry, died in London in 2006 after polonium was dripped into his tea at a restaurant.
Litvinenko lost all his hair — while Arafat still had his white beard, longer even than his trademark three-day stubble — when he was helicoptered to the military hospital near Paris from his West Bank headquarters.
Roland Masse, a member of the prestigious Academie de Medecine, told Israeli media recently that Arafat had been tested for radiation poisoning, and the signs would have been “impossible to miss.”
“A lethal level of polonium simply cannot go unnoticed,” he said.
“When in contact with high levels of polonium, the body suffers from acute radiation, which translates into a state of anaemia and a severe decrease in white blood cells. And yet Arafat did not present any of those symptoms. What did decrease were his platelets, not his white blood cells,” he said.
Doctors said radioactive poisoning would normally cause victims to lose their hair, including eyebrows and lashes, within two to three days.
