12 ms·

Swiss forensic report on Arafat's death

183 points by jdmitch 13y ago

Mikeb85 13y ago
Of course Yasser Arafat was killed. I don't think anyone sane ever thought otherwise considering the circumstances... Same goes for Slobodan Milosevic... There likely are others, but they don't come to mind at the moment. Love the anonymous downvote for saying something unpopular politically, but more than likely factually correct. Dangerous political prisoners/personalities dying in mysterious circumstances at opportune times is not coincidence. The US reign death from above via remote controlled drones and this isn't contested, yet thinking that very suspicious deaths at expedient times are likely assassinations is some crazy conspiracy theory...
- gvkv 13y ago
  Even if true, why do you assume it was the US? There are many actors with the willingness, capability and motivation.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    I don't assume the US (merely using it as an example when we question the possibility of conspiracy theories being true). Arafat could have been killed by other (more radical) Muslims, by the Israelis, by any number of people (though the method suggests a government was probably involved). Milosevic was likely killed by some western government, based on circumstance (being in custody at the Hague), and the fact that he revealed that people were trying to kill him before it happened...
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      the fact that he revealed that people were trying to kill him He claimed people were trying to kill him. Revealed implies that this claim has been proven as fact, which it certainly has not. Suppose I claim that people are trying to kill me. Have I revealed a truth, or is it possible that I'm making things up?
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
  - moocowduckquack 13y ago
    <ignore reason=probably not true>There aren't many with the capability.</ignore> Polonium has no stable isotopes and is naturally so rare that the nuclear industry synthesises it from bisimuth using neutron beams in specialist nuclear reactors. <ignore reason=probably not true>Also, apart from triggers for nukes and poisoning dissidents, it has very few uses.</ignore>
    - KMag 13y ago
      But consumer anti-static brushes (http://www.amazon.com/Static-Master-Brush-1-Inch/dp/B0000AE67S http://www.amazon.com/Static-Master-Brush-1-Inch/dp/B0000AE6...), industrial anti-static coatings, industrial coating thickness measurement, and oil well inspection are a few of its uses.
      - moocowduckquack 13y ago
        I didn't realise it was used so widely. I just read this about the brushes - http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/photo-news/538049/polonium-210-present-in-darkroom-gadget http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/photo-news/538049/polon...
    - jessedhillon 13y ago
      I don't understand who/what your markup is meant for? Are you claiming that things you're writing are probably not true and should be ignored? Then why are you writing them? This seems a little too clever.
      - moocowduckquack 13y ago
        I put the markup in after it was pointed out I was probably talking bollocks there. I didn't want to delete the wrong info as that would make the comment after make no sense, so I did that instead.
- jdmitch 13y ago
  I think a lot of people may agree that "of course he was killed," but it is particularly interesting because of the poison used (polonium-210) which has only been confirmed in one other poisoning case, that of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian dissident. Secondly, it is of interest because Arafat's movements and those he had contact with were very limited around the time that he fell ill, so it raises interesting questions about who could have done it. Hopefully this won't have a negative impact on ongoing peace negotiations.
  - mcantelon 13y ago
    The IDF had him more or less confined to a small area, IIRC.
    - rooshdi 13y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukataa#Arafat.27s_compound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukataa#Arafat.27s_compound
  - eli 13y ago
    Here's a really interesting long form article on Litvinenko's death and the mechanics of how poisoning via Polonium works: https://www.readmatter.com/a/bad-blood-the-life-and-death-of-alexander-litvinenko/ https://www.readmatter.com/a/bad-blood-the-life-and-death-of... The substance has a very short half life, which suggests only people with access to a nuclear reactor could have created it.
    - gadders 13y ago
      Thanks for that link. Awesome article.
      - eli 13y ago
        Thanks! I'm actually sort of addicted to long-form journalism. Here's a list of some of my favorites: http://esd.io/worthreading/ http://esd.io/worthreading/
- api 13y ago
  The phrase "conspiracy theory" has been used to great effect to silence criticism and shut down real investigative journalism. It's a simple guilt by association technique: if you think anything other than the official line, then you are engaging in "conspiracy theory" which means you are like those people who think the queen of England is a reptile. We are actually in worse shape than Soviet Russia. In the USSR, educated people knew that quite a bit of what was in Pravda was a lie. In the West, an attitude of malfeasance-denialism has been encouraged in the educated and upper crust elements of society to the point that erudite people tend to almost deny the existence of elite deviance or official criminality. Given the higher-educated demographic of HN, you can see it around here. Just try arguing that, say, widespread financial shenanigans have anything other than prosaic and innocent explanations.
  - rdtsc 13y ago
    You know it is sad. I remember laughing at people yelling how the government is spying on everyone. In the end they ended up having the last laugh. These are rather sad times when what we thought crazy conspiracy loonies from yesterday seem to be right today. And yeah "conspiracy theorist" is like "terrorist" it can be used to discredit someone very quickly.
    - api 13y ago
      A conspiracy theorist seems to be an investigative journalist or a social critic with poor epistemology. I have noticed over the years that the concretes reported upon and the trends pointed out by conspiracy theorists -- even some of the wackier ones -- have a pretty good hit rate. The paranoid are often very perceptive. It's in the theory department that they fall down, imagining wild and unlikely scenarios to account for things that boil down to simple elite deviance, oligarchy, political opportunism, and corruption. Most of them also have a political, religious, or ethnic bone to pick and try to ascribe all the wrongs of the world to some hated group. But as I said... they're often right about the concretes. It's sad times we live in when unstable nutjobs are the only ones pointing out our obvious descent toward naked plutocratic oligarchy and gangster-statism. Well nutjobs and comedians... what was that quote about the state of a society when only comedians can tell the truth?
- eli 13y ago
  You may be getting downvotes because of your tone. I'm sure there are people who previously (and perhaps still) believe that Arafat was not killed. It's not very nice to suggest they are not sane.
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    You're right, a little hyperbolic perhaps...
- simias 13y ago
  You're being downvoted because you don't back your facts up with any source. You're not contributing anything to the discussion. It's like saying "of course the moon landing is/isn't a hoax, I don't think anyone sane ever thought otherwise considering the circumstances...". It says nothing. Stating something as a fact doesn't make it a fact. For the record I have absolutely no agenda here and I must say I have absolutely no opinion on the subject at hand (nor do I think it belongs on the frontpage of HN, but that's an other subject).
  - joe_the_user 13y ago
    Isn't the source a detailed and convincing report claiming that he died of Polonium poisoning? Sure the comment doesn't have further facts, just a broad gesture to the context. But hey, when a situation has been established, you comment on it.
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  This is crazy thinking. Famous people do typically have access to better medical care, through personal wealth or the goodwill of their supporters, but you seem to think that power/celebrity confers immunity from disease and misadventure. It lowers the risk, is all. This does not mean I disagree with the findings of this report, not least because I haven't read it yet. It's entirely plausible that Arafat could have been murdered...but considering that he was a thorn in Israel's side for around 40 years, you're in no position to talk about him dying at an opportune time. I'm sure there were people who wanted to assassinate him over the last several decades. For the last 2 years of his life he was effectively under house arrest by the Israeli army, so why wait 2? Is there something terribly unusual about 75-year old men dying? Hardly. It's certainly possible that he was assassinated, but by your logic we should also be investigating the death of counterculture icon Lou Reed, who was a mere 71. Also it's rain, not reign.
- nl 13y ago
  Of course Yasser Arafat was killed. It certainly seems more likely today than yesterday. But who killed him? It almost certainly wasn't the Israelis or the US - they liked the fact that they could mostly deal with Arafat, and he'd keep more radical Palestinian elements under control. Milosevic.. why would anyone bother killing him? He was going to be locked away for life, and there wasn't anyone he could really blame, so I can't see what the motive would be? Love the anonymous downvote for saying something unpopular politically, but more than likely factually correct. That's the HN way of saying "eeee it's not fair I'm being downvoted. Someone vote me up". I don't see you complaining about the anonymous up votes.
  - pjbrow 13y ago
    It's simply incorrect to say that Arafat kept the radicals under control - there was clear evidence that he was involved with the militant / terrorist wing of his political party, Fateh (the Al-Aqusa Martyrs Brigades), which carried out a great many suicide bombings. I won't repeat myself (my theory is above), but if you understand the political circumstances at the time, Arafat was in fact the last remaining major road block to a grand bargain that Sharon was moving heaven and earth to get done. There were very compelling reasons to knock him off.
    - nl 13y ago
      Arafat's relationship with al-Aqsa was complicated. It is true that Fatah was paying al-Aqsa, but it's also true that Fatah was trying to get al-Aqsa to stop attacks[1] Around the time of his death al-Aqsa was seeking to cut links with Arafat[2]. To claim that Sharon was trying to cut any kind of deal with the Palestinians is... unusual. (For those not aware, it was former Israeli PM Aiel Sharon's visit to the Moslem area of Temple Mount in Jerusalem that sparked the second intifāḍah[3] (prior to him becoming PM). The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is named after this incident). Additionally, Arafat's Fatah group was seen as the one group strong enough to keep Hamas controlled. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade was a problem for Israel, but it was seen as much less of a problem than Hamas. Subsequent events would show this view was probably correct: When Abbas took control of Fatah it quickly lost control of Gaza to Hamas, and the Israelis have consistently struggled to find a successful approach to dealing with Hamas in Gaza (eg, they later fought a fairly unsuccessful war to try to control Hamas in Gaza). Edit: Although I disagree with you, I think you do make some good points. You were downvoted when I wrote this, so I have upvoted you. [1] http://books.google.com.au/books?id=CGiot772MSEC&pg=PA77&dq=Al-Aqsa+Martyrs%27+Brigades&sig=tZif7ASqqEZYer5I5Q_ubsrjSO0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Al-Aqsa%20Martyrs'%20Brigades&f=false http://books.google.com.au/books?id=CGiot772MSEC&pg=PA77&dq=... [2] http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2004/me_palestinians_07_12.html http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2004/me_pales... [3] http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/538892/Ariel-Sharon/288104/The-launch-of-a-political-career http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/538892/Ariel-Sharo...
- rockyleal 13y ago
  >There likely are others, but they don't come to mind at the moment. Chavez
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    While it's certainly possible, it seems somewhat less likely. He was sick for a few years, and his decline seemed much more gradual. Not saying it's not possible, but seems less likely IMO.
- pjbrow 13y ago
  At the risk of getting down voted on what is an emotional issue for a lot of people, here's my (quite realist) view. I was living in the West Bank when Arafat died, and I knew a bunch of people who worked in his compound. He got very sick, very quickly. The doctors around him were baffled by the steep decline, which is why he was flown to France just before he died. I acknowledge that my theory on the issue is purely circumstantial, but a good place to start with these things is "qui bono?". Ariel Sharon (and Israel, and in my view, everyone) had a lot to gain by Arafat's death. Whatever you think of the nastiness that he'd been involved in, Sharon was a remarkable human - Israelis aren't given to overstatement and they called him the "Lion of God". Sharon was clearly making a dash for a grand bargain, and it's obvious that the "bulldozer" (another of his nicknames) wasn't letting anything get in his way. By pure force of will, he withdrew Israel from Gaza (an absolutely wrenching move for Israel to make), and then left Likud to establish Kadimah so that he could move forward without blockage from the right wing radicals in his old party. In a very short time frame, Sharon bent a famously fractious Israeli parliament into a position to make a grand bargain that would stick - the last major road block to a bargain was Arafat. Israel had had a real go at negotiating with Arafat with Bill Clinton at Camp David. It didn't work out. Of course, there are a bunch of conflicting opinions on who's to blame for the breakdown in talks, but the basic, unarguable outcome was that Arafat wasn't willing to take Israel's best offer. Sharon obviously knew that, and also knew that Arafat's successor was going to be the comparatively mild mannered Abbas, who Sharon was already dealing with constructively. I think Sharon basically decided that, given Arafat's previous form, he was a very high risk as a grand bargain spoiler - Arafat's moral authority with the Palestinian population remained high. So, in the absence of any other option (since Arafat was essentially a dictator), good night Arafat. If you think that Sharon wasn't capable of something that cold, take a look at his conduct in the massacre at Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre). Sharon had a stroke shortly thereafter, and with that, arguably the only person capable of cutting the gordian knot in the medium term was out of the picture. Gotta love ash-sharq al-awsat.
  - deleted 13y ago
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  - 13y ago
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  While I agree with you in principal, your comment sounds a lot like the "no true scotsman" fallacy, which could be a source of the downvotes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
- jpatokal 13y ago
  Well, it's worth noting that the one known time Israel did assassinate a PLO leader, they used the rather less subtle method of sending in a Mossad hit squad to shoot him: http://www.france24.com/en/20121101-israel-admits-responsibility-1988-murder-plo-deputy-arafat-abu-jihad-tunis-palestine http://www.france24.com/en/20121101-israel-admits-responsibi...
- e40 13y ago
  I don't think anyone sane ever thought otherwise This got the downvote for me. It means anyone that disagrees with you is insane, and that's a bad place to start.
jdmitch 13y ago
Interesting that on p. 59 they discuss the theory that the Po-210 was because of smoking, as smokers have twice as much. Conclusion: smoking still wouldn't account for the total amount in some samples, and he wasn't a smoker anyways.
ISL 13y ago
An impressive read; that's a tough job to take on. No matter the quality of the researcher's work, someone, somewhere, is going to be inflamed by the conclusion. It's also a super fun job to take on. Nuclear measurements can be very perceptive. Everyone I know in the business loves to have meaningful applications in the wider world. Our lab was a fun place to be immediately following Fukushima [1] (and Chernobyl, too, but that's before my time as a physicist). On the scale of technical reports, it's well-written, and intended to be read by semi-technical readers. The analysis covers a lot of ground on sources of uncertainty. They do a reasonable job handling uncertainties on the things I know about, and my only remaining concerns extend beyond my expertise. It's a worthy read; check it out! (as a bonus, in the appendices, you get to see photos of everything in the travel bag.) [1] http://www.npl.washington.edu/monitoring/node/1 http://www.npl.washington.edu/monitoring/node/1
dmix 13y ago
The choice of poison is suspicious: "Notably, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident, in 2006 was announced as due to Polonium poisoning." "According to the book The Bomb in the Basement, several deaths in Israel during 1957–1969 were caused by Polonium." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Well-known_poisoning_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Well-known_poisoning_...
- e12e 13y ago
  Wouldn't it be interesting if Litvinenko wasn't killed by the Russians after all, but the hit was contracted out to/preformed by Mossad... I really doubt that, but I wasn't aware there'd been such use of Polonium previously.
  - dmix 13y ago
    Well, the Russian poisoning happened after the Mossad poisoning. The person who killed Litvinenko had time to learn from whomever killed Mossad. Russian agents learning from Israel perhaps.
    - yaakov34 13y ago
      Where for God's sake are you even getting "Mossad" and "poisoning"? There was apparently a radioactive leak at the Weizmann Institute in 1957. Professor Dror Sadeh, in whose laboratory it happened, died of cancer in 1993, i.e. 35 years later. Another researcher died of cancer in 1969 and someone else died of leukemia a month after the leak (which means it was probably unrelated to that specific incident). Sure, exposure to radiation in the laboratory, and not just that particular leak, must have elevated their cancer risk. Cancer deaths are pretty common among early nuclear researchers. But elevated risk of cancer years later is not the same as radiation poisoning. And the Weizmann Institute is not the Mossad.
      - dmix 13y ago
        Oops I meant to say "Arafat poisoning" not "Mossad poisoning" in my original comment. I can no longer edit it. I don't have any solid evidence/source for Israel's involvement, just weird coincidence that they came up on Wikipedia. Purely speculation.
auctiontheory 13y ago
What's remarkable about Arafat's death is that it came as late in his life (75!) as it did. Fun fact: I went to school in a building which later became the PLO Embassy.
gadders 13y ago
I'm not convinced he was assassinated, but I won't shed any tears if he was. He was an evil terrorist with blood on his hands who also managed to rip off his own people to the tune of more than a billion dollars. Good riddance.
- kelvin0 13y ago
  If he was an 'evil terrorist', what do you call a government which has been doing this for more than 50 years, on a larger scale? All the while lying about it too ... Just curious.
  - gadders 13y ago
    Are you talking about Fatah?
    - pedalpete 13y ago
      I doubt he was talking about Fatah (maybe you were being sarcastic), I assume he's talking about the US, making the comparison that the US has waged wars around the world and made many American businesses very rich in the process (defence contractors in particular). I don't agree with the statement, but I think that may be what he is saying.
      - gadders 13y ago
        I was being sarcastic, yes.
      - kelvin0 13y ago
        What is it exactly you don't agree about? The fact that a particular nation is guilty of such 'terrorist' behavior (on a larger scale)? Or on the assumption that US could fit the bill?
- JonFish85 13y ago
  Are you implying that a Nobel Peace Prize winner was, in fact, corrupt?! (Said sarcastically)
ucha 13y ago
There is no motive to the use of Polonium 210. It was used on Alexander Litvinenko because the Russians wanted to show that they were able and willing to take the life of former agents that attacked their interests. What motivates the use of a radioactive element that very few possess?
- hedgie13 13y ago
  > It was used on Alexander Litvinenko because the Russians wanted to show that they were able and willing to take the life of former agents that attacked their interests. Or maybe not. It is very well known that Russian security services brutally murdered Litvinenko, but there is remarkably little evidence. The only evidence, in fact, is that "everyone knows it". What if new data will make you reconsider this well known wisdom? > What motivates the use of a radioactive element that very few possess? It is very widely used and easily available.
  - ucha 13y ago
    Widely used? Easily available? Where and by who?
    - hedgie13 13y ago
      Photographer brushes, textile mills, etc -- source of alpha radiation to get rid of static electricity.
    - bashinator 13y ago
      Right here, by anybody in the U.S. http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_5&products_id=819 http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cP...
      - capnrefsmmat 13y ago
        You'd need thousands of those button sources to make a lethal dose of Po-210. http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/polonium.html http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/po... > They are typically in a form that, if ingested, would pose no health problem, and the radiation is so small that they do not pose a hazard even if the polonium were to be absorbed. It would take 30,000 of these exempt quantities to represent the 3-millicurie fatal dose estimate. Button sources are typically of the size where you wouldn't mind letting undergrads gnaw on them during their physics labs. The worst they could do is choke.
throwmeaway2525 13y ago
So strange--I went to see what, if anything, Gérard de Villiers had written about the situation, and noticed he just died. That always happens. I'll try not to think of anyone here.
dodyg 13y ago
Yasser Arafat was a known quantity both to the US and the Israeli for at least 30 years. There was little incentive to kill him at this stage of his life (unlike in 1982) - and I doubt it brought any significant tactical benefits to do so. I would bet that the poisoning was ordered by someone within the factions of Palestinian struggles.
- MrZongle2 13y ago
  I think this is a very good point. Of all the actors who would interact with Arafat, what motivated one of them to (presumably) kill him in Summer/Fall 2004? Also curious: why did his wife refuse to permit an autopsy?
  - Mikeb85 13y ago
    > Also curious: why did his wife refuse to permit an autopsy? Islam has fairly strict burial customs, and many Islamic clerics have outlawed autopsies. It isn't a universal belief, but likely figured into the equation...
  - dodyg 13y ago
    AJE reported that this was not true. "But French doctors never offered an autopsy and Suha Arafat did not request one." (http://goo.gl/vcGJ2t http://goo.gl/vcGJ2t)
- ryuu 13y ago
  Where would Palestinian factions get polonium from? I feel this to be an unlikely scenario.
  - dodyg 13y ago
    The most obvious ones were Pakistan, Iran and North Korea. You can find possible links between these countries to the Palestinians (especially via Syria and Hezbollah).
    - ryuu 13y ago
QuasiAlon 13y ago
Here's is what I know and hold to be true from following the story over the years: Quite a few high ranking sources in Israel insinuated he died of AIDS. He contracted the disease in the '80s. He was a homosexual and the Israeli intelligence is rumored to have videotaped proof. Israel had no reason to poison him. After the Karine A affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karine_A_Affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karine_A_Affair Arafat's reputation was tarnished beyond repair with Western leaders. In later 2004 the intifada was mostly mitigated already. He was no longer a threat politically or militarily. Israel knew he was dying anyway and if you go back and read news reports you can see that over years he received quite a few treatments overseas for cover up diseases.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  AIDS eh? How convenient... Poisoning is not only more plausible, but also seems to be better supported by evidence now.
  - QuasiAlon 13y ago
    see ars' comment
    - Intermernet 13y ago
      See varjag's comment.
- chc 13y ago
  It's very coincidental that somebody would die of AIDS at the same time he had a lethal dose of polonium in his system.
  - ars 13y ago
    If he actually had any polonium.... Because apparently other investigators found none.
    - 13y ago
nnq 13y ago
Why would anyone use Polonium 210 as a poisoning agent? ...I don't know that much about poisons, but I bet the people in this lob have whole arsenal of "stealth" poisons that could much more easily go unnoticed. And if you want to make it obvious, why not go for something even more obvious or simply a bullet? It seems more like an "artist's signature" thing and it would be interesting to know who this "artist" is!
- deleted 13y ago
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- Symmetry 13y ago
  Well, it takes remarkably little to kill someone, and unlike other poisons in that range it won't be destroyed by cooking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose
  - nnq 13y ago
    Why would the "won't be destroyed by cooking" part matter that much? We all consume a lot of uncooked produce everyday...
    - wonderzombie 13y ago
      At a guess, flexibility. If the opportunity presents itself, your assassination attempt won't be foiled by the target's/victim's decision to have a casserole instead.
    - commandar 13y ago
      It's another attack vector. The working theory is that Alexander Litvenko was poisoned with tea laced with polonium.
    - rcthompson 13y ago
      Theoretically, if you were paranoid, you could consume only thoroughly-cooked foods as a defense against poisoning. So a low-dose poison that survives cooking defeats that defense.
MichaelMoser123 13y ago
And in Russia they did a parallel investigation that shows no polonium. So as usual, every side of the conflict can pick its own narrative. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-palestinians-arafat-russia-idUSBRE99E0LN20131015 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-palestinians-ar...
- kissickas 13y ago
  Did you read the first sentence of that article? "However, the government scientific body later denied that it had made any official statement about the research, saying only that it had handed its results to the Russian Foreign Ministry."
- MichaelMoser123 13y ago
  Also experts asked by the BBC say that this is a very bold statement; Prof. Paddy Regan, says: "They are saying the hypothesis that Arafat was poisoned with polonium-210 is valid and has not been disproven by the data. However they cannot say definitively that he was murdered. Prof Regan says a series of assumptions would have been made in order to ascertain how much Po-210 may or may not have been in Mr Arafat's body at the time of his death." 'has not been disproven' - means it has not been proven either. No? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24838061 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24838061
badwetter 13y ago
Considering that this material is supposed to degrade quickly - to find the amount they did after so long in the ground is incredible sleuth work.
- ars 13y ago
  It's not "incredible sleuth work" it's completely impossible - the background radiation is more than what's left.
  - badwetter 13y ago
    false
deleted 13y ago
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arjn 13y ago
Just putting this out there - what if Arafat's body was contaminated after he died .... so that there would be a controversy later and some target could be blamed ? Say it was done just within the few minutes or hours after he died, could the polonium be absorbed into his body far enough that it would look like he was poisoned ?
- coldarchon 13y ago
  What if he did it himself to become a martyr?

183 points by jdmitch 13y ago

Of course Yasser Arafat was killed. I don't think anyone sane ever thought otherwise considering the circumstances... Same goes for Slobodan Milosevic... There likely are others, but they don't come to mind at the moment. Love the anonymous downvote for saying something unpopular politically, but more than likely factually correct. Dangerous political prisoners/personalities dying in mysterious circumstances at opportune times is not coincidence. The US reign death from above via remote controlled drones and this isn't contested, yet thinking that very suspicious deaths at expedient times are likely assassinations is some crazy conspiracy theory...

gvkv 13y ago
Even if true, why do you assume it was the US? There are many actors with the willingness, capability and motivation.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  I don't assume the US (merely using it as an example when we question the possibility of conspiracy theories being true). Arafat could have been killed by other (more radical) Muslims, by the Israelis, by any number of people (though the method suggests a government was probably involved). Milosevic was likely killed by some western government, based on circumstance (being in custody at the Hague), and the fact that he revealed that people were trying to kill him before it happened...
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    the fact that he revealed that people were trying to kill him He claimed people were trying to kill him. Revealed implies that this claim has been proven as fact, which it certainly has not. Suppose I claim that people are trying to kill me. Have I revealed a truth, or is it possible that I'm making things up?
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
- moocowduckquack 13y ago
  <ignore reason=probably not true>There aren't many with the capability.</ignore> Polonium has no stable isotopes and is naturally so rare that the nuclear industry synthesises it from bisimuth using neutron beams in specialist nuclear reactors. <ignore reason=probably not true>Also, apart from triggers for nukes and poisoning dissidents, it has very few uses.</ignore>
  - KMag 13y ago
    But consumer anti-static brushes (http://www.amazon.com/Static-Master-Brush-1-Inch/dp/B0000AE67S http://www.amazon.com/Static-Master-Brush-1-Inch/dp/B0000AE6...), industrial anti-static coatings, industrial coating thickness measurement, and oil well inspection are a few of its uses.
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      I didn't realise it was used so widely. I just read this about the brushes - http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/photo-news/538049/polonium-210-present-in-darkroom-gadget http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/photo-news/538049/polon...
  - jessedhillon 13y ago
    I don't understand who/what your markup is meant for? Are you claiming that things you're writing are probably not true and should be ignored? Then why are you writing them? This seems a little too clever.
    - moocowduckquack 13y ago
      I put the markup in after it was pointed out I was probably talking bollocks there. I didn't want to delete the wrong info as that would make the comment after make no sense, so I did that instead.
jdmitch 13y ago
I think a lot of people may agree that "of course he was killed," but it is particularly interesting because of the poison used (polonium-210) which has only been confirmed in one other poisoning case, that of Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian dissident. Secondly, it is of interest because Arafat's movements and those he had contact with were very limited around the time that he fell ill, so it raises interesting questions about who could have done it. Hopefully this won't have a negative impact on ongoing peace negotiations.
- mcantelon 13y ago
  The IDF had him more or less confined to a small area, IIRC.
  - rooshdi 13y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukataa#Arafat.27s_compound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mukataa#Arafat.27s_compound
- eli 13y ago
  Here's a really interesting long form article on Litvinenko's death and the mechanics of how poisoning via Polonium works: https://www.readmatter.com/a/bad-blood-the-life-and-death-of-alexander-litvinenko/ https://www.readmatter.com/a/bad-blood-the-life-and-death-of... The substance has a very short half life, which suggests only people with access to a nuclear reactor could have created it.
  - gadders 13y ago
    Thanks for that link. Awesome article.
    - eli 13y ago
      Thanks! I'm actually sort of addicted to long-form journalism. Here's a list of some of my favorites: http://esd.io/worthreading/ http://esd.io/worthreading/
api 13y ago
The phrase "conspiracy theory" has been used to great effect to silence criticism and shut down real investigative journalism. It's a simple guilt by association technique: if you think anything other than the official line, then you are engaging in "conspiracy theory" which means you are like those people who think the queen of England is a reptile. We are actually in worse shape than Soviet Russia. In the USSR, educated people knew that quite a bit of what was in Pravda was a lie. In the West, an attitude of malfeasance-denialism has been encouraged in the educated and upper crust elements of society to the point that erudite people tend to almost deny the existence of elite deviance or official criminality. Given the higher-educated demographic of HN, you can see it around here. Just try arguing that, say, widespread financial shenanigans have anything other than prosaic and innocent explanations.
- rdtsc 13y ago
  You know it is sad. I remember laughing at people yelling how the government is spying on everyone. In the end they ended up having the last laugh. These are rather sad times when what we thought crazy conspiracy loonies from yesterday seem to be right today. And yeah "conspiracy theorist" is like "terrorist" it can be used to discredit someone very quickly.
  - api 13y ago
    A conspiracy theorist seems to be an investigative journalist or a social critic with poor epistemology. I have noticed over the years that the concretes reported upon and the trends pointed out by conspiracy theorists -- even some of the wackier ones -- have a pretty good hit rate. The paranoid are often very perceptive. It's in the theory department that they fall down, imagining wild and unlikely scenarios to account for things that boil down to simple elite deviance, oligarchy, political opportunism, and corruption. Most of them also have a political, religious, or ethnic bone to pick and try to ascribe all the wrongs of the world to some hated group. But as I said... they're often right about the concretes. It's sad times we live in when unstable nutjobs are the only ones pointing out our obvious descent toward naked plutocratic oligarchy and gangster-statism. Well nutjobs and comedians... what was that quote about the state of a society when only comedians can tell the truth?
eli 13y ago
You may be getting downvotes because of your tone. I'm sure there are people who previously (and perhaps still) believe that Arafat was not killed. It's not very nice to suggest they are not sane.
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  You're right, a little hyperbolic perhaps...
simias 13y ago
You're being downvoted because you don't back your facts up with any source. You're not contributing anything to the discussion. It's like saying "of course the moon landing is/isn't a hoax, I don't think anyone sane ever thought otherwise considering the circumstances...". It says nothing. Stating something as a fact doesn't make it a fact. For the record I have absolutely no agenda here and I must say I have absolutely no opinion on the subject at hand (nor do I think it belongs on the frontpage of HN, but that's an other subject).
- joe_the_user 13y ago
  Isn't the source a detailed and convincing report claiming that he died of Polonium poisoning? Sure the comment doesn't have further facts, just a broad gesture to the context. But hey, when a situation has been established, you comment on it.
anigbrowl 13y ago
This is crazy thinking. Famous people do typically have access to better medical care, through personal wealth or the goodwill of their supporters, but you seem to think that power/celebrity confers immunity from disease and misadventure. It lowers the risk, is all. This does not mean I disagree with the findings of this report, not least because I haven't read it yet. It's entirely plausible that Arafat could have been murdered...but considering that he was a thorn in Israel's side for around 40 years, you're in no position to talk about him dying at an opportune time. I'm sure there were people who wanted to assassinate him over the last several decades. For the last 2 years of his life he was effectively under house arrest by the Israeli army, so why wait 2? Is there something terribly unusual about 75-year old men dying? Hardly. It's certainly possible that he was assassinated, but by your logic we should also be investigating the death of counterculture icon Lou Reed, who was a mere 71. Also it's rain, not reign.
nl 13y ago
Of course Yasser Arafat was killed. It certainly seems more likely today than yesterday. But who killed him? It almost certainly wasn't the Israelis or the US - they liked the fact that they could mostly deal with Arafat, and he'd keep more radical Palestinian elements under control. Milosevic.. why would anyone bother killing him? He was going to be locked away for life, and there wasn't anyone he could really blame, so I can't see what the motive would be? Love the anonymous downvote for saying something unpopular politically, but more than likely factually correct. That's the HN way of saying "eeee it's not fair I'm being downvoted. Someone vote me up". I don't see you complaining about the anonymous up votes.
- pjbrow 13y ago
  It's simply incorrect to say that Arafat kept the radicals under control - there was clear evidence that he was involved with the militant / terrorist wing of his political party, Fateh (the Al-Aqusa Martyrs Brigades), which carried out a great many suicide bombings. I won't repeat myself (my theory is above), but if you understand the political circumstances at the time, Arafat was in fact the last remaining major road block to a grand bargain that Sharon was moving heaven and earth to get done. There were very compelling reasons to knock him off.
  - nl 13y ago
    Arafat's relationship with al-Aqsa was complicated. It is true that Fatah was paying al-Aqsa, but it's also true that Fatah was trying to get al-Aqsa to stop attacks[1] Around the time of his death al-Aqsa was seeking to cut links with Arafat[2]. To claim that Sharon was trying to cut any kind of deal with the Palestinians is... unusual. (For those not aware, it was former Israeli PM Aiel Sharon's visit to the Moslem area of Temple Mount in Jerusalem that sparked the second intifāḍah[3] (prior to him becoming PM). The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade is named after this incident). Additionally, Arafat's Fatah group was seen as the one group strong enough to keep Hamas controlled. The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade was a problem for Israel, but it was seen as much less of a problem than Hamas. Subsequent events would show this view was probably correct: When Abbas took control of Fatah it quickly lost control of Gaza to Hamas, and the Israelis have consistently struggled to find a successful approach to dealing with Hamas in Gaza (eg, they later fought a fairly unsuccessful war to try to control Hamas in Gaza). Edit: Although I disagree with you, I think you do make some good points. You were downvoted when I wrote this, so I have upvoted you. [1] http://books.google.com.au/books?id=CGiot772MSEC&pg=PA77&dq=Al-Aqsa+Martyrs%27+Brigades&sig=tZif7ASqqEZYer5I5Q_ubsrjSO0&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Al-Aqsa%20Martyrs'%20Brigades&f=false http://books.google.com.au/books?id=CGiot772MSEC&pg=PA77&dq=... [2] http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2004/me_palestinians_07_12.html http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2004/me_pales... [3] http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/538892/Ariel-Sharon/288104/The-launch-of-a-political-career http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/538892/Ariel-Sharo...
rockyleal 13y ago
>There likely are others, but they don't come to mind at the moment. Chavez
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  While it's certainly possible, it seems somewhat less likely. He was sick for a few years, and his decline seemed much more gradual. Not saying it's not possible, but seems less likely IMO.
pjbrow 13y ago
At the risk of getting down voted on what is an emotional issue for a lot of people, here's my (quite realist) view. I was living in the West Bank when Arafat died, and I knew a bunch of people who worked in his compound. He got very sick, very quickly. The doctors around him were baffled by the steep decline, which is why he was flown to France just before he died. I acknowledge that my theory on the issue is purely circumstantial, but a good place to start with these things is "qui bono?". Ariel Sharon (and Israel, and in my view, everyone) had a lot to gain by Arafat's death. Whatever you think of the nastiness that he'd been involved in, Sharon was a remarkable human - Israelis aren't given to overstatement and they called him the "Lion of God". Sharon was clearly making a dash for a grand bargain, and it's obvious that the "bulldozer" (another of his nicknames) wasn't letting anything get in his way. By pure force of will, he withdrew Israel from Gaza (an absolutely wrenching move for Israel to make), and then left Likud to establish Kadimah so that he could move forward without blockage from the right wing radicals in his old party. In a very short time frame, Sharon bent a famously fractious Israeli parliament into a position to make a grand bargain that would stick - the last major road block to a bargain was Arafat. Israel had had a real go at negotiating with Arafat with Bill Clinton at Camp David. It didn't work out. Of course, there are a bunch of conflicting opinions on who's to blame for the breakdown in talks, but the basic, unarguable outcome was that Arafat wasn't willing to take Israel's best offer. Sharon obviously knew that, and also knew that Arafat's successor was going to be the comparatively mild mannered Abbas, who Sharon was already dealing with constructively. I think Sharon basically decided that, given Arafat's previous form, he was a very high risk as a grand bargain spoiler - Arafat's moral authority with the Palestinian population remained high. So, in the absence of any other option (since Arafat was essentially a dictator), good night Arafat. If you think that Sharon wasn't capable of something that cold, take a look at his conduct in the massacre at Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_and_Shatila_massacre). Sharon had a stroke shortly thereafter, and with that, arguably the only person capable of cutting the gordian knot in the medium term was out of the picture. Gotta love ash-sharq al-awsat.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- 13y ago
hayksaakian 13y ago
While I agree with you in principal, your comment sounds a lot like the "no true scotsman" fallacy, which could be a source of the downvotes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
jpatokal 13y ago
Well, it's worth noting that the one known time Israel did assassinate a PLO leader, they used the rather less subtle method of sending in a Mossad hit squad to shoot him: http://www.france24.com/en/20121101-israel-admits-responsibility-1988-murder-plo-deputy-arafat-abu-jihad-tunis-palestine http://www.france24.com/en/20121101-israel-admits-responsibi...
e40 13y ago
I don't think anyone sane ever thought otherwise This got the downvote for me. It means anyone that disagrees with you is insane, and that's a bad place to start.

jdmitch 13y ago

Interesting that on p. 59 they discuss the theory that the Po-210 was because of smoking, as smokers have twice as much. Conclusion: smoking still wouldn't account for the total amount in some samples, and he wasn't a smoker anyways.

ISL 13y ago

An impressive read; that's a tough job to take on. No matter the quality of the researcher's work, someone, somewhere, is going to be inflamed by the conclusion. It's also a super fun job to take on. Nuclear measurements can be very perceptive. Everyone I know in the business loves to have meaningful applications in the wider world. Our lab was a fun place to be immediately following Fukushima [1] (and Chernobyl, too, but that's before my time as a physicist). On the scale of technical reports, it's well-written, and intended to be read by semi-technical readers. The analysis covers a lot of ground on sources of uncertainty. They do a reasonable job handling uncertainties on the things I know about, and my only remaining concerns extend beyond my expertise. It's a worthy read; check it out! (as a bonus, in the appendices, you get to see photos of everything in the travel bag.) [1] http://www.npl.washington.edu/monitoring/node/1 http://www.npl.washington.edu/monitoring/node/1

dmix 13y ago

The choice of poison is suspicious: "Notably, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident, in 2006 was announced as due to Polonium poisoning." "According to the book The Bomb in the Basement, several deaths in Israel during 1957–1969 were caused by Polonium." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Well-known_poisoning_cases https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonium#Well-known_poisoning_...

e12e 13y ago
Wouldn't it be interesting if Litvinenko wasn't killed by the Russians after all, but the hit was contracted out to/preformed by Mossad... I really doubt that, but I wasn't aware there'd been such use of Polonium previously.
- dmix 13y ago
  Well, the Russian poisoning happened after the Mossad poisoning. The person who killed Litvinenko had time to learn from whomever killed Mossad. Russian agents learning from Israel perhaps.
  - yaakov34 13y ago
    Where for God's sake are you even getting "Mossad" and "poisoning"? There was apparently a radioactive leak at the Weizmann Institute in 1957. Professor Dror Sadeh, in whose laboratory it happened, died of cancer in 1993, i.e. 35 years later. Another researcher died of cancer in 1969 and someone else died of leukemia a month after the leak (which means it was probably unrelated to that specific incident). Sure, exposure to radiation in the laboratory, and not just that particular leak, must have elevated their cancer risk. Cancer deaths are pretty common among early nuclear researchers. But elevated risk of cancer years later is not the same as radiation poisoning. And the Weizmann Institute is not the Mossad.
    - dmix 13y ago
      Oops I meant to say "Arafat poisoning" not "Mossad poisoning" in my original comment. I can no longer edit it. I don't have any solid evidence/source for Israel's involvement, just weird coincidence that they came up on Wikipedia. Purely speculation.

auctiontheory 13y ago

What's remarkable about Arafat's death is that it came as late in his life (75!) as it did. Fun fact: I went to school in a building which later became the PLO Embassy.

gadders 13y ago

I'm not convinced he was assassinated, but I won't shed any tears if he was. He was an evil terrorist with blood on his hands who also managed to rip off his own people to the tune of more than a billion dollars. Good riddance.

kelvin0 13y ago
If he was an 'evil terrorist', what do you call a government which has been doing this for more than 50 years, on a larger scale? All the while lying about it too ... Just curious.
- gadders 13y ago
  Are you talking about Fatah?
  - pedalpete 13y ago
    I doubt he was talking about Fatah (maybe you were being sarcastic), I assume he's talking about the US, making the comparison that the US has waged wars around the world and made many American businesses very rich in the process (defence contractors in particular). I don't agree with the statement, but I think that may be what he is saying.
    - gadders 13y ago
      I was being sarcastic, yes.
    - kelvin0 13y ago
      What is it exactly you don't agree about? The fact that a particular nation is guilty of such 'terrorist' behavior (on a larger scale)? Or on the assumption that US could fit the bill?
JonFish85 13y ago
Are you implying that a Nobel Peace Prize winner was, in fact, corrupt?! (Said sarcastically)

ucha 13y ago

There is no motive to the use of Polonium 210. It was used on Alexander Litvinenko because the Russians wanted to show that they were able and willing to take the life of former agents that attacked their interests. What motivates the use of a radioactive element that very few possess?

hedgie13 13y ago
> It was used on Alexander Litvinenko because the Russians wanted to show that they were able and willing to take the life of former agents that attacked their interests. Or maybe not. It is very well known that Russian security services brutally murdered Litvinenko, but there is remarkably little evidence. The only evidence, in fact, is that "everyone knows it". What if new data will make you reconsider this well known wisdom? > What motivates the use of a radioactive element that very few possess? It is very widely used and easily available.
- ucha 13y ago
  Widely used? Easily available? Where and by who?
  - hedgie13 13y ago
    Photographer brushes, textile mills, etc -- source of alpha radiation to get rid of static electricity.
  - bashinator 13y ago
    Right here, by anybody in the U.S. http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_5&products_id=819 http://unitednuclear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cP...
    - capnrefsmmat 13y ago
      You'd need thousands of those button sources to make a lethal dose of Po-210. http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/polonium.html http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/po... > They are typically in a form that, if ingested, would pose no health problem, and the radiation is so small that they do not pose a hazard even if the polonium were to be absorbed. It would take 30,000 of these exempt quantities to represent the 3-millicurie fatal dose estimate. Button sources are typically of the size where you wouldn't mind letting undergrads gnaw on them during their physics labs. The worst they could do is choke.

throwmeaway2525 13y ago

So strange--I went to see what, if anything, Gérard de Villiers had written about the situation, and noticed he just died. That always happens. I'll try not to think of anyone here.

dodyg 13y ago

Yasser Arafat was a known quantity both to the US and the Israeli for at least 30 years. There was little incentive to kill him at this stage of his life (unlike in 1982) - and I doubt it brought any significant tactical benefits to do so. I would bet that the poisoning was ordered by someone within the factions of Palestinian struggles.

MrZongle2 13y ago
I think this is a very good point. Of all the actors who would interact with Arafat, what motivated one of them to (presumably) kill him in Summer/Fall 2004? Also curious: why did his wife refuse to permit an autopsy?
- Mikeb85 13y ago
  > Also curious: why did his wife refuse to permit an autopsy? Islam has fairly strict burial customs, and many Islamic clerics have outlawed autopsies. It isn't a universal belief, but likely figured into the equation...
- dodyg 13y ago
  AJE reported that this was not true. "But French doctors never offered an autopsy and Suha Arafat did not request one." (http://goo.gl/vcGJ2t http://goo.gl/vcGJ2t)
ryuu 13y ago
Where would Palestinian factions get polonium from? I feel this to be an unlikely scenario.
- dodyg 13y ago
  The most obvious ones were Pakistan, Iran and North Korea. You can find possible links between these countries to the Palestinians (especially via Syria and Hezbollah).
  - ryuu 13y ago

QuasiAlon 13y ago

Here's is what I know and hold to be true from following the story over the years: Quite a few high ranking sources in Israel insinuated he died of AIDS. He contracted the disease in the '80s. He was a homosexual and the Israeli intelligence is rumored to have videotaped proof. Israel had no reason to poison him. After the Karine A affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karine_A_Affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karine_A_Affair Arafat's reputation was tarnished beyond repair with Western leaders. In later 2004 the intifada was mostly mitigated already. He was no longer a threat politically or militarily. Israel knew he was dying anyway and if you go back and read news reports you can see that over years he received quite a few treatments overseas for cover up diseases.

Mikeb85 13y ago
AIDS eh? How convenient... Poisoning is not only more plausible, but also seems to be better supported by evidence now.
- QuasiAlon 13y ago
  see ars' comment
  - Intermernet 13y ago
    See varjag's comment.
chc 13y ago
It's very coincidental that somebody would die of AIDS at the same time he had a lethal dose of polonium in his system.
- ars 13y ago
  If he actually had any polonium.... Because apparently other investigators found none.
  - 13y ago

nnq 13y ago

Why would anyone use Polonium 210 as a poisoning agent? ...I don't know that much about poisons, but I bet the people in this lob have whole arsenal of "stealth" poisons that could much more easily go unnoticed. And if you want to make it obvious, why not go for something even more obvious or simply a bullet? It seems more like an "artist's signature" thing and it would be interesting to know who this "artist" is!

deleted 13y ago
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Symmetry 13y ago
Well, it takes remarkably little to kill someone, and unlike other poisons in that range it won't be destroyed by cooking. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose
- nnq 13y ago
  Why would the "won't be destroyed by cooking" part matter that much? We all consume a lot of uncooked produce everyday...
  - wonderzombie 13y ago
    At a guess, flexibility. If the opportunity presents itself, your assassination attempt won't be foiled by the target's/victim's decision to have a casserole instead.
  - commandar 13y ago
    It's another attack vector. The working theory is that Alexander Litvenko was poisoned with tea laced with polonium.
  - rcthompson 13y ago
    Theoretically, if you were paranoid, you could consume only thoroughly-cooked foods as a defense against poisoning. So a low-dose poison that survives cooking defeats that defense.

MichaelMoser123 13y ago

And in Russia they did a parallel investigation that shows no polonium. So as usual, every side of the conflict can pick its own narrative. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-palestinians-arafat-russia-idUSBRE99E0LN20131015 http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/15/us-palestinians-ar...

kissickas 13y ago
Did you read the first sentence of that article? "However, the government scientific body later denied that it had made any official statement about the research, saying only that it had handed its results to the Russian Foreign Ministry."
MichaelMoser123 13y ago
Also experts asked by the BBC say that this is a very bold statement; Prof. Paddy Regan, says: "They are saying the hypothesis that Arafat was poisoned with polonium-210 is valid and has not been disproven by the data. However they cannot say definitively that he was murdered. Prof Regan says a series of assumptions would have been made in order to ascertain how much Po-210 may or may not have been in Mr Arafat's body at the time of his death." 'has not been disproven' - means it has not been proven either. No? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24838061 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24838061

badwetter 13y ago

Considering that this material is supposed to degrade quickly - to find the amount they did after so long in the ground is incredible sleuth work.

ars 13y ago
It's not "incredible sleuth work" it's completely impossible - the background radiation is more than what's left.
- badwetter 13y ago
  false

deleted 13y ago

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arjn 13y ago

Just putting this out there - what if Arafat's body was contaminated after he died .... so that there would be a controversy later and some target could be blamed ? Say it was done just within the few minutes or hours after he died, could the polonium be absorbed into his body far enough that it would look like he was poisoned ?

coldarchon 13y ago
What if he did it himself to become a martyr?