A Not So Common Poison for Assassins [Update]

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A not so common toxin Polonium-210 is now discovered to be the cause of Yasser Arafat’s death. The Palestinian leadership seems to be aware of the poisoning from the beginning and failed to cover all its tracks.

UPDATE: Palestinian Authority: Arafat’s body can be exhumed over poison claim

Allegations of foul play – and of Palestinian involvement in it – have long marked factional fighting among Palestinians. The latest revelation coincides with renewed tensions within Arafat’s Fatah movement, now headed by his successor President Mahmoud Abbas, and between Fatah and Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls the Gaza Strip. Abbas’s administration said it would approve Suha Arafat’s request to bring her husband’s remains out for autopsy from a limestone mausoleum built next to his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, without giving a date for such a move. “The Authority, as it always has been, is ready to completely cooperate with and clear the way for an investigation into the true causes leading to the martyrdom of the late president,” said Nabil Abu Rdeineh, spokesman for Abbas.

In 2005, the New York Times obtained a copy of Arafat’s medical records.

Polonium-210 and The Assassination of Alexander Litvinenko

Polonium-210 (210Po) made headlines in 2006 as the poison used to murder former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko. Litvinenko was a KGB agent who later became an FSB (Federal Security Service) agent when Russia replaced the collapsed KGB in the early 1990s. He was given orders to assassinate an influential Russian business tycoon (whom he knew well), orders he disobeyed and then publicly exposed, among other KGB and FSB activities, on the international stage. His disclosures embarrassed the Kremlin and then-director of the FSB, Vladamir Putin. The Kremlin charged Litvinenko with treason and imprisoned him for nine months. After his release in 2000, in the wake of numerous death threats, Litvinenko and his family fled to the United Kingdom where they were granted political asylum.

Litvinenko continued to aggressively denounce the Kremlin and Vladamir Putin, whom he accused of drug trafficking and pedophilia, perhaps naively enjoying a false sense of security inside the UK. Then, on November 1, 2006, he was mysteriously poisoned. Litvinenko’s rapid deterioration was chronicled by the international media, and he ultimately suffered for an excruciating 22 days before lapsing into a coma and dying on November 23. The toxin was identified just hours before his death as 210Po, an extremely rare substance. It is one million times more lethal than cyanide, and an amount the size of a grain of salt will kill a human being. Toxicology reports show that Litvinenko ingested more than ten times the lethal dose of the poison, indicating the resolve of his assassin to silence him once and for all.

Polonium-210, lethal dose might cost as little as $22.50, plus tax.