Nov. 6, 2013
By LAMA HASAN
A Swiss forensics investigation (click here) claims that the former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned with radioactive polonium, the TV channel Al Jazeera reported today.
In the 108-page report, the scientists say they found at least 18 times the normal levels of polonium in his rib, pelvis and in soil stained with his decaying organs.
The investigation, a year in the making, concludes that Arafat had ''unexpectedly high levels'' of polonium and that ''the results moderately support the proposition that the death was the consequence of poisoning with polonium.''
A Palestinian forensic investigator removed 20 specimens from Arafat's grave in the West Bank city of Ramallah in November 2012. His body was reinterred the same day. The samples from his corpse and grave were taken in front of three international teams....
It took there weeks from the time of Litvinenko's first symtoms to his death. Who had Arafat been with from September 11 to November 11, 2004?
Polonium (click here) was discovered by Marie Sklodowska-Curie and Pierre Curie in 1898 and was named after Marie's native land of Poland (Latin: Polonia). This element was the first one discovered by them while they were investigating the cause of pitchblende radioactivity.
Po-210 has a half-life of 138 days. This is the time it takes for the activity to decrease by half due to a process of radioactive decay. Po-210 decays to stable lead-206
uranium ores contain less than 0.1 mg Po-210 per ton
Po-210 can be manufactured artificially by irradiating stable bismuth-209 with thermal neutrons resulting in the formation of radioactive Bi-210, which decays (half-life 5 days) into Po-210. Polonium may now be made in milligram amounts in this procedure which uses high neutron fluxes found in nuclear reactors. Only about 100 grams are produced each year, making polonium exceedingly rare.
Polonium is not subject to IAEA safeguards.
Was Arafat a Shi'ite? Arafat had met with Iranians shortly after the release of the American hostages in hopes of finding allies that could assist him in leveraging against the USA.
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Arafat with Iranian Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, days after Iranian Revolution
...Iran also admitted (click here) to producing small amounts of polonium-210 in the TRR in the early 1990s through the irradiation of bismuth targets. Polonium 210 is a well-known radioactive material used in a beryllium-polonium neutron initiator that starts the chain reaction in a nuclear weapon. Iran claims that the polonium was produced as part of a study of the production of neutron sources for use in radioisotope thermoelectric generators and not for use in a nuclear weapons neutron initiator. The TRR was under traditional safeguards at the time of the undeclared plutonium experiments and polonium production. This type of safeguards is not designed to detect such small-scale activities.
Litvinenko was working for a Chechen newspaper.
Luke Harding and Ian Sample
The Guardian
Wednesday 6 November 2013
Seven years ago (click here) the Kremlin critic and ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko met two Russians in a London hotel. What happened next was one of the most brazen assassinations of modern times. According to British prosecutors, Litvinenko's companions, Andrei Lugovoi and Dmitry Kovtun, slipped a colourless, odourless substance into his tea. Litvinenko drank. Not much, but enough for him to die in agony three weeks later in University College hospital.
The substance was polonium-210, a rare and highly radioactive isotope that a Swiss team has discovered in Yasser Arafat's exhumed corpse. It is extremely hard to detect. Scientists only identified it in Litvinenko hours before his death. A former FSB officer, and teetotaller, Litvinenko was a fitness fanatic. Doctors say it was only because he was in such good shape that he lasted so long. If he had died sooner, the cause of death would probably never have been uncovered....
