PARIS, 21 November 2004 — Suha Arafat was given the medical file of her late husband Yasser Arafat and flew off to Tunisia Friday as the late Palestinian president’s nephew was expected in the French capital to pick up the same documents amid some controversy.
Defense Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau said early yesterday that Arafat’s nephew, Nasser Al-Qidwa, who was traveling to Paris, had the right to access to the information if he requested it.
But the Paris lawyers of Suha Arafat had said the dossier should only be given to “the children and the widow.”
Bureau said that it was not up to the ministry to confirm or deny what the lawyers believed but in any case Qidwa had the right to see the file if he so wished. Earlier, the lawyers said in a statement to AFP: “Mrs. Suha Arafat received at 3:45 p.m. (1445 GMT) today a copy of the medical file of her husband, President Yasser Arafat, which was released by the authorities at the Percy military hospital.”
“She has begun to study it,” said the statement by lawyers Philippe Plantade and Jean-Marie Burguburu. The cause of death for Arafat, who was admitted to the hospital on Oct. 29 and died Nov. 11, has never been elucidated.
The lawyers’ statement said Suha Arafat had thanked “France, President Jacques Chirac and all the French authorities particularly the hematology and emergency hospital staff from the bottom of her heart for their exceptional support.”
A Palestinian official said that Qidwa had left Gaza for Paris “in his capacity as a relative” to pick up the dossier. On his return to the Palestinian territories, Qidwa was expected to hand over the medical file to a ministerial council set up to investigate causes of Arafat’s death. After receiving the medical file Suha Arafat left Paris for Tunis, where she also maintains a residence in the city’s northern suburb of Gammarth, said Plantade. She flew on a private plane owned by her deceased husband, said the lawyer.
Meanwhile, Qidwa, said by telephone from Cairo yesterday that he is planning to go to Paris soon. “Yes, I’m planning to come to Paris soon, but I have no schedule or travel plans for the time being.”
In an another report, the Austrian business magazine Format said Arafat controlled a network of companies, investments and bank accounts with a value totaling at least $1.5 billion (1.15 billion euros).
The magazine was quoting a Central Intelligence Agency report. It said the CIA had conducted enquiries after receiving information that a holding company of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) had invested nine million dollars in a pharmaceutical company in Belleville, Ontario.
Format said investigators had “stepped on an anthill” when they uncovered the stake held by the Palestinian Commercial Service Corporation (PCSC) in Bioniche Life Sciences, revealing a whole network of PLO funds such as Chalcedony, Onyx, Evergreen, SilverHaze and Avmax International, the last based in Aruba in the Caribbean.
The weekly said it had seen a file “detailing in concrete terms for the first time how much money was involved.”
