Call for Yasser Arafat death probe gains first international backer

The next day Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas endorsed exhuming Arafat’s
body from its mausoleum at the Palestinian presidency headquarters in the
West Bank city of Ramallah for a forensic examination.

The supreme Palestinian Islamic authority, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Mohammed
Hussein, said there was no religious law forbidding Arafat’s exhumation.

“If it is necessary to examine a body for the needs of an inquiry and that
requires its full or partial retrieval there is nothing to prevent that,” he
told AFP.

In Tunisia, Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem said: “We call for an urgent
meeting of Arab League foreign ministers and the creation of an
international committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the
death.

“We owe a debt to that great man, who had such an influence on the Palestinian
national cause.”

Tunis hosted the Palestine Liberation Organisation, of which Arafat was the
chairman, after it was expelled from Lebanon during the 1982 Israeli
invasion until the 1994 launch of Palestinian autonomy.

The Institute of Radiation Physics at the University of Lausanne tested items
belonging to Arafat at Al-Jazeera’s request, including clothing worn by him,
which were handed to his widow Suha by the Paris hospital where he died in
November 2004 at the age of 75.

Suha Arafat gave Al-Jazeera permission to take the items, which contained
strands of Arafat’s hair and traces of sweat, urine and blood, for testing
at several European laboratories, including the Switzerland institute, which
reported finding high levels of polonium.

And Tunisia called for the Arab League to convene.

“We call for an urgent meeting of Arab League foreign ministers and the
creation of an international committee to investigate the circumstances
surrounding the death” of Arafat, Foreign Minister Rafik Abdessalem told
private radio station Mosaique FM.

“We are waiting for this Tunisian initiative to be translated into action and
for the meeting to be held,” Malki said.

“Then we will ask for an international investigation committee to be formed
similar to the one formed into the assassination of (Lebanese Prime
Minister) Rafiq Hariri so we can solve so many of the unanswered questions,”
he added.

“We want to show that the PA (Palestinian Authority) leadership and people are
all anxious to know all the details surrounding Arafat’s death, so we can
close this file.”

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