No BBC coverage of French findings regarding Arafat’s death

On January 19th the BBC devoted multi-platform coverage to an interview with Yasser Arafat’s widow to mark the tenth anniversary of his death.Hardtalk Suha Arafat

By means of that interview Suha Arafat was once again given a BBC platform from which to promote unproven theories regarding the cause of her husband’s death: a topic which the corporation has also covered extensively in the past.

A recent announcement by the French authorities has to date received no coverage on the BBC News website’s Middle East page.

“French experts have ruled out that the 2004 death of iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was the result of poisoning, a prosecutor told AFP Monday

The prosecutor of the western Paris suburb of Nanterre said the experts found there was no foul play in Arafat’s death, which sparked immediate and enduring conspiracy rumors. […]

The French experts “maintain that the polonium 210 and lead 210 found in Arafat’s grave and in the samples are of an environmental nature,” Nanterre prosecutor Catherine Denis said.”

Readers may recall that similar findings by a Russian team in 2013 received far less BBC coverage than those supporting the claim that Arafat had been poisoned. 

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