The European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday "inadmissible" the request of the widow and daughter of Yasser Arafat.

They had seized the ECHR after the dismissal rendered by the French justice within the framework of the investigation for "assassination" of the Palestinian leader.

The complaint was lodged against X by the two women after the death of the Palestinian raïs on November 11, 2004 at the Percy military hospital in Clamart, near Paris.

"A very large number of acts were carried out, without interruption, at national and international level", notes the Court in its judgment, noting again "the attention paid by the (French) authorities to the applicants' complaint", which invoked a violation of Article 6.1 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to a fair trial).

"At all stages of the procedure", they "were (...) able to effectively exercise their rights and to assert their position on the various points in dispute", still considers the ECHR, which judges the request of Souha El Kodwa Arafat and Zahwa El Kodwa Arafat, respectively widow and daughter of the Palestinian leader, "manifestly ill-founded".

The poisoning hypothesis supported by Swiss experts

Yasser Arafat was admitted to the Percy military hospital in Clamart at the end of October for abdominal pain he had felt in his headquarters in Ramallah, where he had been living in confinement since December 2001, surrounded by the Israeli army. Rumors of poisoning involving Israel immediately arose. The causes of his death have never been elucidated, but traces of polonium 210, a highly toxic radioactive substance, were subsequently discovered on the personal effects of the Palestinian leader.

Experts appointed by the French judges had twice rejected the thesis of poisoning, believing that the presence in the external environment of a natural radioactive gas, radon, would explain the large quantities of polonium recorded.

Swiss experts called upon by the widow, on the contrary, judged that their results "reasonably support the hypothesis of poisoning" with polonium.

A "lengthily motivated" dismissal order

An additional expert report, ordered by the investigating judges, however confirmed the findings of the French report.

The judges issued a “lengthy reasoned” dismissal order, unsuccessfully contested by the applicants, rejected in 2017 by the Court of Cassation, recalls the ECHR.

The applicants' requests were "rejected by reasoned decisions" and were "duly examined by the French judges", still considers the Court, according to which it "does not appear" that the French justice has "drawn arbitrary conclusions of facts ”or that it“ exceeded the limits of a reasonable interpretation of the documents of the proceedings ”and“ of the applicable texts ”.

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  • Murder

  • Investigation

  • Cedh

  • Justice

  • Assassination

  • Europe

  • Yasser Arafat