Poisonous Radioactive Element Polonium Found on Arafat Clothing

Time to face the likely possibility that Zionist Israel assassinated him.
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2012/07/was-yasser-arafat-killed-by-poloniu...
Nature News Blog
Was Yasser Arafat killed by polonium?
04 Jul 2012 | 17:24 BST | Posted by Mark Peplow | Category: Health and medicine, Physics & Mathematics
The body of Yasser Arafat will be exhumed so that tests can determine whether he died after being poisoned with the radioactive metal polonium-210 (see The Guardian).
Arafat was President of the Palestinian National Authority when he died on 11 November 2004, after falling ill about two weeks earlier with what was initially described as flu. His condition deteriorated rapidly, however, and he was transferred to a hospital in France, where he spent his final days in a coma. Despite a plethora of rumours, his death has remained unexplained.
Al Jazeera reported yesterday that tests on Arafat’s personal belongings had found abnormally high levels of polonium-210, the radioactive element used to kill former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. Polonium-210 emits alpha particles that can tear through cells, damaging DNA and causing radiation poisoning. Since alpha particles cannot penetrate skin, polonium has to be ingested to have fatal effects. In Litvinenko, it initially caused vomiting, diarrhoea and weight loss – symptoms that Arafat also experienced.
Al Jazeera had approached the Institute of Radiation Physics in Lausanne, Switzerland, on behalf of Arafat’s widow, Suha, who provided various items of her husband’s clothing and other effects for analysis.
François Bochud, director of the institute, told Nature that he did not expect to find any polonium in these items. But “we looked for it because of Litvinenko”, he says.
The scientists mixed samples of cloth with a solvent to extract any lingering radioisotopes. They washed this solution on to a silver disc, which absorbs the isotopes, and tested it using alpha-particle spectroscopy. They also conducted control experiments using items of Arafat’s clothing that he had not worn after falling ill.
A sample of urine-stained underwear showed polonium-210 radioactivity of 180 millibequerels (mBq) – roughly one radioactive decay every 5 seconds. A control sample had a radioactivity of about 10 mBq. Bochud says that naturally-occurring polonium-210 – resulting from the decay of radon gas, for example – normally causes a radioactivity of about 5 mBq per litre of urine.
Polonium-210 has a half-life of about 138 days, so about 20 half-lives had passed between Arafat’s death and the testing in Lausanne. This means that the amount of polonium in the samples – and in Arafat’s body – would have been about a million times greater when he died. Bochud and his colleagues calculated that Arafat would have had similar levels of polonium-210 in his body as Litvinenko.
So was Arafat poisoned? “We can’t conclude this,” says Bochud, although he adds that he is “50% sure”. It is conceivable that some external contamination could have caused the results they saw, he says.
The scientists ran their first set of tests in February, and then repeated them three months later to measure how much the polonium radioactivity had changed. This was one way of assessing whether the polonium was being produced by the decay of lead-210, another naturally-occurring radioisotope with a longer half-life of more than 22 years. Yet the polonium radioactivity had tailed off in a way that was consistent with the majority of it having been introduced directly into Arafat’s body, rather than being produced by a parent isotope, says Bochud.
Bochud adds that no further information could be gleaned from the samples they have. “Our only suggestion,” he says, “is to exhume the body and measure the radioactivity.” It now seems that those tests will go ahead, and could solve the mystery of Arafat’s death once and for all.
and don't forget Rafiq Hariri...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2010/07/23/the-hariri-assassination/
Weekend Edition July 23-25, 2010
Israel's Fingerprints Surface
The Hariri Assassination
by RANNIE AMIRI
In the Middle East, the link between political machinations, espionage and assassination is either clear as day, or clear as mud.
As for the yet unsolved case of the February 2005 murder of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, mud might be giving way to daylight.
A crackdown on Israeli spy rings operating in Lebanon has resulted in more than 70 arrests over the past 18 months. Included among them are four high-ranking Lebanese Army and General Security officers—one having spied for the Mossad since 1984.
A significant breakthrough in the ongoing investigation occurred in late June and culminated in the arrest of Charbel Qazzi, head of transmission and broadcasting at Alfa, one of Lebanon’s two state-owned mobile service providers.
According to the Lebanese daily As-Safir, Qazzi confessed to installing computer programs and planting electronic chips in Alfa transmitters. These could then be used by Israeli intelligence to monitor communications, locate and target individuals for assassination, and potentially deploy viruses capable of erasing recorded information in the contact lines. Qazzi’s collaboration with Israel reportedly dates back 14 years.
On July 12, a second arrest at Alfa was made. Tarek al-Raba’a, an engineer and partner of Qazzi, was apprehended on charges of spying for Israel and compromising national security. A few days later, a third Alfa employee was similarly detained.
Israel has refused to comment on the arrests. Nevertheless, their apparent ability to have penetrated Lebanon’s military and telecommunication sectors has rattled the country and urgently raised security concerns.
What does any of this have to do with the Hariri assassination?
Outside the obvious deleterious ramifications of high-ranking Lebanese military officers working for Israel, the very legitimacy of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is now in question. The STL is the U.N.-sanctioned body tasked with prosecuting those responsible for the assassination of the late prime minister. On Feb. 14, 2005, 1,000 kg of explosives detonated near Hariri’s passing motorcade, killing him and 21 others.
It is believed the STL will issue indictments in the matter as early as September—relying heavily on phone recordings and mobile transmissions to do so.
According to the AFP, “A preliminary report by the U.N. investigating team said it had collected data from mobile phone calls made the day of Hariri’s murder as evidence.”
The National likewise reported, “The international inquiry, which could present indictments or findings as soon as September, according to unverified media reports, used extensive phone records to draw conclusions into a conspiracy to kill Hariri, widely blamed on Syria and its Lebanese allies …”
In a July 16 televised speech, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyid Hassan Nasrallah speculated the STL would use information gleaned from Israeli-compromised communications to falsely implicate the group in the prime minister’s murder:
“Some are counting in their analysis of the (STL) indictment on witnesses, some of whom turned out to be fake, and on the telecommunications networks which were infiltrated by spies who can change and manipulate data.
“Before the (2006) war, these spies gave important information to the Israeli enemy and based on this information, Israel bombed buildings, homes, factories and institutions. Many martyrs died and many others were wounded. These spies are partners in the killings, the crimes, the threats and the displacement.”
Nasrallah called the STL’s manipulation an “Israeli project” meant to “create an uproar in Lebanon.”
Indeed, in May 2008 Lebanon experienced a taste of this. At the height of an 18-month stalemate over the formation of a national unity government under then Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, his cabinet’s decision to unilaterally declare Hezbollah’s fixed-line communication system illegal pushed the country to the brink of civil war.
Recognizing the value their secure lines of communication had in combating the July 2006 Israeli invasion and suspecting that state-owned telecoms might be compromised, Hezbollah resisted Siniora’s plans to have its network dismantled. Their men swept through West Beirut and put a quick end to the government’s plan. Two years later, their suspicions appear to have been vindicated.
Opposition MP and Free Patriotic Movement head Michel Aoun has already warned Nasrallah that the STL will likely indict “uncontrolled” Hezbollah members to be followed by “… Lebanese-Lebanese and Lebanese-Palestinian tension, and by an Israeli war on Lebanon.”
Giving credence to Nasrallah and Aoun’s assertions, Commander in Chief of the Israel Defense Forces Gabi Ashkenazi, predicted “with lots of wishes” that the situation in Lebanon would deteriorate in September after the STL indicts Hezbollah for Hariri’s assassination.
Ashkenazi’s gleeful, prescient testimony to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs Committee betrays what Israel hopes the fallout from the STL’s report will be: fomentation of civil strife and discord among Lebanon’s sectarian groups, generally divided into pro- and anti-Syria factions. Ashkenazi anticipates this to happen, of course, because he knows Israel’s unfettered access to critical phone records will have framed Hezbollah for the crime.
Israel’s agents and operatives in Lebanon and its infiltration of a telecom network have been exposed. At the very least, the STL must recognize that evidence of alleged Hezbollah involvement in Hariri’s death (a group that historically enjoyed good ties with the late premier) is wholly tainted and likely doctored.
The arrest of Qazzi and al-Raba’a in the breakup of Israeli spy rings should prompt the STL to shift its focus to the only regional player that has benefited from Hariri’s murder; one that will continue to do so if and when their designs to implicate Hezbollah are realized.
It is time to look at Tel Aviv.
RANNIE AMIRI is an independent Middle East commentator. He may be reached at: rbamiri [at] yahoo [dot] com.