Whodunnit ?

We now know that the mysterious death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was by the hand of an assassin.  His body was exhumed and found to contain traces of Polonium-210, a radioactive poison that is 250,000 times more lethal than cyanide.

Yasser Arafat was the leader of the Palestine resistance to Israeli occupation and for decades was the stumbling block to any peace settlement.   The world regarded him as a terrorist leader and he made no secret about the command structure he headed that led to the death of many people and the acts of terrorism that supported his aims.

At one time, an event on the White House lawn where he shook hands with an Israeli leader seemed to offer hope that the standoff between the Palestinian and Israel might finally be resolved, but at the last minute Arafat backed away - and the opportunity was lost.

Arafat's influence was fast waning in his final days.  The Israelis had him holed up in his headquarters in the West Bank compound - where he developed a mysterious illness.   He was evacuated to a French military hospital - and died there in 2004.   His widow at that time refused permission for the coroner to hold an inquest to determine the cause of death.

The big question that will rumble through the halls of world power will be - " Who killed Arafat ? "

Obviously, he was an enemy of the Israelis, but they had him contained and there was no obvious gain from his death.   His resistance movement was fragmented and while he was a hero to many, he was despised by others.  It is quite possible that his fading power was an incentive to ambitious others that a time for change was approaching.   After this passage of time, a clear finding of responsibility is unlikely.

What the Arafat disclosure does highlight is the availability of a hard to detect poison that has now been used in at least two cases concerning the removal of high profile targets.   Polonium-210 was virtually unknown when Arafat was killed in 2004, but just two years later a Russian dissident who was a sworn enemy of Vladimir Putin and lived in London was poisoned with this substance.

The killing of Alexander Litivenko had all the hallmarks of the KGB and science has revealed that a fatal dose can be as small as a single grain of sand.    That is a thought that must make world leaders uneasy.  We live in a world of high tension between countries and the issues range from trade and politics to the divide of religion - and all these issues play into the hands of terrorists.

The death of any world leader will now raise the spectre of the possible use of Polonium-210.