Widow requests exhumation of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s body.

Having been led to believe that Yasser Arafat may have been poisoned, his widow Suha Arafat, made the request to Palestinian officials following the discovery of radioactivity on personal belongings of the one time leader.

“The president is making all the contacts for the process to be done,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee.

Medical experts from Switzerland will travel to Ramallah to take samples from the body, Ashrawi said.

“The remains will be exhumed for them to take whatever necessary samples to carry out the required tests,” she said.

A Swiss doctor said last Wednesday that investigators had found high levels of toxic polonium-210 on some of Arafat’s belongings, though it does not mean he suffered radiation poisoning.

“We have evidence there is too much polonium, but we also have hints from the medical records that this may not be the case,” said Francois Bochud, director of the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland. “The only way to resolve this anomaly would be by testing the body.”

Via CNN