WEST BANK/FILE: Former Palestinian minister Nabil Kassis remembers Yasser Arafat's final days, as Swiss forensic experts say their tests support, but do not prove the theory that the late Palestinian leader was poisoned

Record ID: 564734

  • Title: WEST BANK/FILE: Former Palestinian minister Nabil Kassis remembers Yasser Arafat's final days, as Swiss forensic experts say their tests support, but do not prove the theory that the late Palestinian leader was poisoned
  • Date: 7th November 2013
  • Summary: RAMALLAH, WEST BANK (FILE - OCTOBER 29, 2004) (ORIGINALLY 4:3) (REUTERS) THEN PALESTINIAN PRIME MINISTER QUREI, PALESTINIAN MINISTER SAEB EREKAT AND OTHER PALESTINIAN OFFICIALS WAVING AT HELICOPTER CARRYING ARAFAT JORDANIAN HELICOPTERS ARRIVING AT COMPOUND TO TRANSPORT ARAFAT VARIOUS OF ARAFAT BOARDING HELICOPTER HELICOPTER LEAVING
  • Embargoed: 22nd November 2013 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: West bank
  • City:
  • Country: Palestinian Territories
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVACMWWGOHHHJSO585B3O14S9QU3
  • Story Text: Former Palestinian minister Nabil Kassis on Thursday (November 7) recalled his final few days with his late friend Yasser Arafat, a day after the Palestinian leader's widow said tests had proved he had died from radioactive polonium poisoning in 2004.

    "I first met him and got to know him face to face when we were in the Madrid negotiations. We then built a relationship and I entered many ministries under his presidency. Abu Ammar had this trait that he made everyone around him feel like he was someone special to him, so maybe I too felt that way. However, I do believe that we had a good and strong relationship," said Kassis, using Arafat's nom de guerre, Abu Ammar.
    Swiss experts said on Thursday that tests on Arafat's remains were consistent with polonium poisoning, but were not proof that he died that way.
    In the occupied West Bank, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation issued a new call for an international investigation into Arafat's death.
    The Palestinian appeal was made after the Al-Jazeera news channel on Tuesday (November 5) published a Swiss scientific report based on bone samples taken from Arafat's grave last November revealing unusually high levels of the deadly polonium isotope in his body.
    Arafat spent the last months of his life holed up in a battle-scarred compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah, surrounded by Israeli tanks. Inside the building, a core group of aides took care of their ageing leader's every need.
    Kassis, who was a tourism minister during Arafat's time, said the late president had first started to appear unwell in 2003.

    "As usual he was working. If there is any memory I have of him it is how hard working he was, he always had work in front of him. He did not look good, I could tell he was ill and asked him what was wrong with him and he said that he had a flu, it was fasting time," Kassis said.

    "So I said goodbye and left and travelled but his health was not good. In our meeting he was as normal, apart form the illness, meaning we spoke about the matters we usually discussed, but healthwise he was not well," he added.
    The nuclear physicist said Arafat was constantly working.

    "I used to see him regularly and the last time I saw him he was ill and he described his illness as flu, a stomach flu, but that was his description," said Kassis.
    Chief Palestinian peace negotiator Saeb Erekat made an appeal for an international tribunal over Arafat's death last year, when the Qatar-based news channel first disclosed the presence of the polonium on the late president's clothing.
    The report by Lausanne University Hospital's Institute of Radiation Physics said that Arafat fell violently ill some four hours after a meal on October 12, 2004. He never recovered, dying a month later in a Paris hospital aged 75.
    Allegations of foul play surfaced immediately after his death. Arafat had foes among his own people, but many Palestinians pointed the finger at Israel, which besieged him in his Ramallah headquarters for the final two and a half years of his life.
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