Swiss team visits Arafat grave ahead of probe

06/11/2012
A Swiss laboratory team has made a brief visit to the West Bank city
of Ramallah to prepare for the exhumation of the late President Yasser
Arafat, a Palestinian official has said .
The team, along with French investigators, is expected to participate
in an operation starting on November 26 and expected to take "several
weeks or a month" to exhume Arafat's remains as part of a probe into
the circumstances of his death in 2004 .
Ahead of the exhumation, experts from the Institute of Radiation
Physics at Switzerland'sUniversity of Lausanne made a brief visit to
Ramallah, visiting the grave and meeting with Palestinian health
minister Hani Abdeen and justice minister Ali Mhanna .
" A delegation from the Swiss laboratory visited Yasser Arafat's grave
to examine the site," Tawfiq Tirawi, head of the Palestinian
investigative committee on Arafat's death, said .
Tirawi told AFP news agency he met the team "to discuss next steps ".
Tirawi stressed that opening the grave to test Arafat's remains would
only take place once in thepresence of both the Swiss experts and
French investigators, who are running separate probes .
Delicate procedure
Al Jazeera's Clayton Swisher, whose film What Killed Arafat? triggered
the international investigations, spoke with the Swiss and witnessed
their meetings at the Muqataa alongside engineers at the grave of
Yasser Arafat .
" It's a delicate procedure, given the amount of marble, concrete and
steel involved, and the forensic examiners want to ensure the late
Palestinian leader's body will be approached with great care," said
Swisher, reporting from Ramallah .
Arafat died in a French military hospital near Paris on November 11,
2004 and French experts wereunable to say what had killed him, with
many Palestinians convinced he was poisoned by Israel .
French prosecutors opened a murder inquiry in August after Al Jazeera
broadcast the investigation in which Swiss experts said they had found
elevated levels of radioactive polonium on Arafat's personal effects .
Polonium is a highly toxic substance rarely found outside military and
scientific circles .
It was used to kill former Russianspy turned Kremlin critic Alexander
Litvinenko, who died in2006 in London shortly after drinking tea laced
with the poison .
Swiss experts involved in the investigation said traces of radioactive
poison would be lost forever if Arafat's remains were not analyzed
soon.