VARIOUS/FILE: Widow of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's files complaint in French court alleging her husband was murdered

Record ID: 480506

  • Title: VARIOUS/FILE: Widow of former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat's files complaint in French court alleging her husband was murdered
  • Date: 31st July 2012
  • Summary: NANTERRE, FRANCE (JULY 31, 2012) (REUTERS) VARIOUS EXTERIORS OF PALACE OF JUSTICE IN NANTERRE, ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF PARIS PARIS, FRANCE (JULY 31, 2012) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (French) REUTERS LEGAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT THIERRY LEVEQUE SAYING: "The lawyers of Mrs Arafat have lodged a formal complaint alleging murder with the chief investigating magistrate in Nanterre. After the prosecutor has given his guidance, he will say whether an investigation should be opened on the death of Yasser Arafat. If only to check whether it is legally possible to investigate, a procedure will be opened, which could lead to the exhumation or Mr Arafat's body."
  • Embargoed: 15th August 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: France
  • Country: France
  • Topics: International Relations,Politics,People
  • Reuters ID: LVAF2EIJCF10LUDX0IT7WQXN708Y
  • Story Text: Lawyers acting for Yasser Arafat's widow filed an official complaint in France on Tuesday (July 31) alleging that the former Palestinian leader was murdered and said her goal was to establish the truth behind the sudden collapse in his health in 2004.
    The complaint, accusing a person or persons unknown of premeditated murder, was filed by Suha Arafat and the couple's daughter Zahwa in the Paris suburb of Nanterre following a media report suggested Arafat may have been poisoned.
    The court will decide whether a police inquiry should be opened. A legal source said that a procedure would likely be opened to examine whether a case of alleged poisoning that took place in another country could be legally investigated in France.
    Arafat's widow, her lawyer, and several senior Palestinan officials declined comment.
    But in his last public comment on on the matter, lawyer Pierre-Olivier Sur said the hypothesis should at least be investigated.
    "From the moment that there is poison in the body, there is a possibility that cannot be set aside which is that Yasser Arafat was poisoned. The first step is to know if there is indeed poison in the body. There are sufficient clues that allow us to believe that," he said in a July 10 interview.
    Yasser Arafat, the late leader of the Palestinian National Authority, died aged 75 in late 2004 in a military hospital in France where he was flown for treatment after collapsing at his West Bank headquarters.
    Allegations of foul play quickly surfaced after the doctors who treated him said they could not establish a cause of death.
    The controversy was reignited in early July when a Swiss institute said in an Al Jazeera documentary that it had found surprisingly high levels of polonium-210 on Arafat's clothing including his hat and underwear-- the same substance used to kill former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
    Suha Arafat, who lives partly in Malta and partly in France, has said that any revelation of a plot to kill her husband would only glorify his legacy and harden Palestinian resolve in any future negotiations with Israel.
    A probe into Arafat's death will stoke old suspicions over the affair, with many Arabs seeing Israel as prime suspect behind the mysterious decline of the man who led Palestinians' bid for a state through years of war and peace.
    The Palestinian Authority has agreed to exhume Arafat's body from a limestone mausoleum in Ramallah for an autopsy and Tunisia has called for a ministerial meeting of the Arab League to discuss his death.
    Earlier this month, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat's successor, met French President Francois Hollande and asked him to help form an international investigative group via the United Nations Security Council, Al Jazeera reported.
    Arafat had spent three years confined by Israel to his Ramallah compound in the wake of a Palestinian uprising and was already ailing when he suddenly collapsed in October 2004.
    Foreign doctors flocked to his bedside from Tunisia, Egypt and Jordan amid public assurances from Arafat's aides over the next two weeks that he was suffering from no more than the flu.
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