Another forensic investigation regarding the death of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat – this time conducted by a Russian lab with access to the deceased terrorist’s remains – has concluded that he died of natural causes and not, as some conspiracy theorists have suggested, of polonium poisoning:

Russia’s state news agencies quote Vladimir Uiba, the head of the Federal Medical and Biological Agency, saying that its research has found that Arafat’s death nine years ago was “natural and not caused by radiation.”

The findings are in line with those published by a French lab, but in tension with how a third investigation – this one Swiss – was reported by domestic and international media outlets.

There are mathematically exactly zero plausible scenarios under which a deadly dose of polonium administered to Arafat in 2004 could have been detected by recent tests, but nonetheless the explicitly inconclusive Swiss results were credulously reported as evidence that Arafat may have been poisoned by the Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times, CNN, ABC News, CBS News, the BBC, the Telegraph, Salon, and others.

The reports provided fodder for conspiracy theories blaming Israel for Arafat’s death, and the Guardian declared that “suspicion points strongly” at the Jewish state for poisoning Arafat.

[Photo: Al Jazeera English / YouTube ]