New Arafat Medical File Released In Death Probe
Medical files released for the first time Thursday portray Yasser Arafat
as a robust 75-year-old whose sudden health crisis, a month before his
mysterious 2004 death, was initially blamed on viral gastroenteritis.
The treatment notes by Arafat’s Arab doctors who cared for him at his
West Bank compound before he was airlifted to France are part of a
renewed push to find out what killed the Palestinian leader.
For years, little was heard about official Palestinian efforts to
uncover Arafat’s cause of death. An investigation by the Arabic
satellite TV channel Al-Jazeera, in collaboration with Arafat’s widow,
Suha, has put new pressure on Arafat’s successor, Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas, to be seen as vigorously searching for the truth.
Last week, Switzerland’s Institute of Radiation Physics said clothing
and personal items used by Arafat in his final days showed elevated
traces of the radioactive agent polonium-210. The items were provided by
Mrs. Arafat and sent to the lab by Al-Jazeera. The findings, though
inconclusive, revived Palestinian claims that Arafat was poisoned.
Some Palestinian officials have charged that Israel poisoned Arafat.
Israel has repeatedly denied the charges over the years, saying it would
not have been in Israel’s interest to kill him, though it blamed him
for Palestinian violence. An Israeli official dismissed the renewed
allegations as “ludicrous.”
Mrs. Arafat, who refused to consent to an autopsy immediately after her
husband’s death, has lived abroad for years and is estranged from most
of the Palestinian leadership.
Abbas and his aides have sent conflicting messages about their intentions.
Earlier this week, senior Palestinian official Saeb Erekat said Abbas made a final decision to allow an autopsy.
On Thursday, members of a committee investigating Arafat’s death were
less forceful. Justice Minister Ali Mohanna said Arafat’s nephew, Nasser
al-Kidwa, asked for the full report from the Swiss lab, and a decision
on further testing would only be made after reviewing the report.
While backtracking on an autopsy, Arafat’s doctors for the first time
released their detailed treatment notes covering the 18-day period when
they cared for him at his Israeli-besieged West Bank compound before he
was airlifted to a French military hospital on Oct. 29, 2004.
Based on the doctors’ report and later test results in France, Arafat
had escaped many of the chronic afflictions, like diabetes, common in
his age group. A non-smoker, he weighed 68 kilograms (150 pounds). He
was taking medication for chronic tremors whose cause was not explained
further. They wrote that he suffered from a gallstone and had vitiligo, a
loss of pigmentation of the skin.
Arafat’s downward spiral began just before midnight on Oct. 11, 2004.
Two hours after a late supper, he vomited but had no other complaints,
the report said.
His doctors diagnosed him with viral gastroenteritis. He improved with
medication and went about his daily routine, and four days later even
joined in the dawn-to-dusk fast of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
But there was persistent vomiting and diarrhea, and he began feeling
weaker. His blood platelet count dropped, and on Oct. 28, his medical
team — by now consisting of doctors from Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan and
Palestine — decided to send him abroad. The next morning, he was flown
to France, where he died on Nov. 11, 2004.
An Israeli specialist, Dr. Joseph Zimmerman, who reviewed the Ramallah
medical file at the request of The Associated Press, said Arafat’s early
symptoms were not consistent with viral gastroenteritis.
“I don’t think that this common garden-variety viral infection would
progress to such an extent and result in a fatality,” said Zimmerman, a
senior physician at Hadassah University Hospital in Jerusalem.
Zimmerman said poisoning seemed unlikely, even by a radioactive agent
such as polonium-210. He pointed out that Arafat’s platelet counts
dropped suddenly and stayed low and that he eventually exhibited signs
of liver dysfunction.
“This is not typical of poisoning,” Zimmerman said, adding that a bacterial infection could have caused these symptoms.
French doctors said Arafat died of a massive stroke and suffered from a
blood condition known as disseminated intravascular coagulation, or DIC.
The records were inconclusive about what brought about the DIC, which
has numerous possible causes, including infections and liver disease.
Parts of Arafat’s French medical file were also posted Thursday on the
website of the Yasser Arafat Foundation, though key elements had been
published in the past.
At Thursday’s news conference, one of Arafat’s physicians, Dr. Abdullah
Bashir, said he believes the available medical data points to poisoning,
but would not elaborate.
Bashir released a 2010 exchange of letters with the French hospital in
which his request to get more information on toxicology was turned down.
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