Yasser Arafat died of natural cause

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat died of natural causes, not radiation poisoning, Russian forensic scientists have said.

CNN reports that their investigation was one of three carried out on his remains in 2012. Arafat died in Paris in 2004, aged 75.

Last month, Swiss scientists said they had detected high levels of radioactive polonium but could not say if it had caused his death.

A French inquiry is also said to have found he was not a victim of poisoning.

Arafat fell ill after eating a meal in his compound in Ramallah and weeks later was admitted to hospital in France, where he died.

He was diagnosed with a serious blood disorder and died of a stroke on 8 November 2004. But no post mortem examination was carried out as his widow Suha did not ask for one.

When in 2012 an investigation by al-Jazeera TV in conjunction with Swiss analysts in Lausanne found abnormal levels of polonium-210 on his personal effects, Suha Arafat called for her late husband’s body to be exhumed.

France then launched a formal murder inquiry.

The Vaudois University Hospital Centre in Lausanne reported its findings last month, on the ninth anniversary of his death, saying its results “offer moderate backing for the theory of poisoning”.

But a leaked report of Russia’s initial tests on the same day said high radioactive penetration was “unsubstantiated”. Weeks later, a source said the French report had ruled out the poisoning theory, and pointed towards a natural death.

Announcing its conclusions on Thursday, the head of Russia’s Federal Medical-Biological Agency, Vladimir Uiba, said “Yasser Arafat died not from the effects of radiation but of natural causes”.