A Palestinian team looking into the death of Yasser Arafat has accused Israel of assassinating the iconic Palestinian leader in a Paris hospital.
“The inquiry committee has been able to identify the assassin of former president Yasser Arafat,” media reports quoted Tawfiq Tirawi, the head of the probe opened in 2009 as saying.
His comments came on the eve of the 11th anniversary of Arafat’s death and two months after French judges closed an investigation into claims he was murdered, without bringing any charges.
“Israel is responsible,” he said, without giving further details other than to add that “we still need some time to elucidate the exact circumstances of this assassination”.
Arafat died in Percy military hospital near Paris aged 75 in November 2004 after developing stomach pains while at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
His widow Suha lodged a complaint at a court in France in 2012, claiming that her husband was assassinated, sparking an inquiry. Later that year, Arafat’s tomb in Ramallah was opened for a few hours allowing three teams of French, Swiss and Russian investigators to collect around 60 samples.