PARIS â?? A leading French doctor who teaches at the Paris hospital where Yasser Arafat died in 2004 has broken the official French medical silence surrounding the case to tell The Times of Israel, based on Arafatâ??s medical report, that there is â??absolutely no wayâ? the Palestinian leader was poisoned.
Dr. Roland Masse, a member of the prestigious Académie de Médecine who currently teaches radiopathology at Percy Military Training Hospital in the Paris suburb of Clamart, where Arafat was hospitalized two weeks before his death on November 11 eight years ago, spoke to The Times of Israel to scotch the allegations of polonium poisoning two weeks before a group of scientists are set to take samples for testing from Arafatâ??s body.
Masse said the symptoms of polonium poisoning would have been â??impossible to miss,â? noted that Percy had tested Arafat for radiation poisoning, and revealed that the hospital specializes in the related field of radiation detection. â??A lethal level of polonium simply cannot go unnoticed,â? he said, speaking as workers in Ramallah on Tuesday began the process of preparing Arafatâ??s grave for exhumation.
Dr. Thierry Revel, the head of the Hematology Department at Percy who signed the medical report on November 14, 2004, has refused to comment on the case. Indeed, medical confidentiality laws prevent doctors in France from divulging any information on their current or past patients. It was Arafatâ??s family that chose to make public the late Palestinian leaderâ??s medical report; Al Jazeera, a Qatar-based news outlet, said in July that it had received the report from Arafatâ??s widow Suha.
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