RAMALLAH, 12 December 2004 — Yasser Arafat’s nephew said yesterday the lack of a diagnosis of what led to his uncle’s death last month raised suspicions the Palestinian leader died of “unnatural” causes.
The comments by Nasser Al-Kidwa, made after he handed over the 558-page medical dossier to Palestinian officials in Ramallah, were certain to fuel speculation that Arafat was poisoned. Arafat died in a French hospital on Nov. 11.
Al-Kidwa repeated his statement from last month that the French doctors were unable to rule out the possibility that Arafat had been poisoned, although they said they had not found traces of “any poison known to them.”
“Examinations of X-rays and all imaginable tests... are still with the same results, the inability of reaching a clear diagnosis,” Al-Kidwa said in English at a news conference in Ramallah yesterday.
“That is precisely the reason why suspicions are there, because without a reason you cannot escape the other possibility...that there is unnatural cause for the death,” he added.
