CAIRO, 21 December 2004 — Yasser Arafat was poisoned over a year ago when he received a delegation of supposed supporters in his Ramallah compound, the late Palestinian leader’s Cabinet secretary was quoted as saying in yesterday’s Al-Hayat daily.
“Something strange happened to Arafat around a year ago. It was on Sept. 25, 2003...,” Ahmed Abdelrahman told the London-based newspaper.
“The president shook hands with around 30 people before leaving to vomit. It was from that moment that the president’s health started slowly deteriorating,” he explained.
Since Arafat died in a French hospital of a mystery illness on Nov. 11, several leading Palestinian officials have suggested the veteran leader had been poisoned, although French doctors have insisted there was no medical basis for such allegations.
Two weeks before the visit mentioned by Abdelrahman, the Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Cabinet had taken a decision to “remove” Arafat from his Ramallah compound, although without specifying by what means.
The threat, Israel’s most explicit at the time, had prompted expressions of support for Arafat, who also received the visit of several delegations.
“Arafat shook hands with people, who had come to express solidarity with him in his confinement. They were a mixture of Palestinians, foreigners and Israelis,” Arafat’s former Cabinet secretary recalled.
“’Could it be that they got to me?’, Arafat asked himself. He also said: ‘Is it possible that 10 doctors can’t find out what I’m suffering from?’”
“The president was exposed to something, and I’m inclined to believe it was maybe gas or something else. I don’t know about all the types of poisons, but there are some 700 that are unknown,” Abdelrahman said.
On Sept. 25, Arafat received a visit from a group of cyclists from around the world on a peace mission as well as from a group of activists accompanying the parents of a US peace activist who had died six months earlier crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in the southern Gaza Strip.
“The last time he became ill, on Oct. 12, 2004, he had the same symptoms: Vomiting, refusal to eat and all the symptoms of flu without a flu,” Abdelrahman told Al-Hayat. The Cabinet secretary, who recorded the evolution of Arafat’s health in his diary, said red rashes appeared on his skin before he was evacuated to France for treatment this year.
