Radioactive polonium found in Arafat's clothes
New radiation tests on the clothes and belongings of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat have led to speculation he died from poisoning by polonium.
Dr Francois Bochud, the head of the Institute of Radiation Physics at Lausanne in Switzerland says his team measured an unexplained, elevated level of unsupported polonium-210.
"The conclusion was that we did find some significant polonium that was present in these samples," he told Al Jazeera.
Mr Arafat's death at the age of 75 in a French hospital was surrounded by mystery and allegations he had been poisoned.
Litvinenko
Polonium was used to kill Russian former spy turned Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, who died in 2006 after drinking tea laced with the radioactive substance at a London hotel.
"If we take the scenario of Mr Litvinenko, one gigabecquerel at the beginning would come to about 10 millibecquerel," Dr Bochud told Al Jazeera. "What was astonishing in our case was that we found values in the samples of Mr Arafat that were in the same order of magnitude."
Al Jazeera's documentary claims unsupported polonium is the kind made in a nuclear reactor and even the tiniest amount, not even visible to the naked eye, is enough to kill.
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