Carter-Ruck teams up with French firm in Yasser Arafat 'poisoning' case

Paris-based attorney Pierre-Olivier Sur, lead partner at the firm, will head the case on behalf of Suha Arafat and her daughter.

London law firm Carter-Ruck has been retained by Mrs Arafat to co-ordinate efforts worldwide concerning what she claims were the suspicious circumstances of her husband’s death.

The team, led by senior partner Cameron Doley and senior associate Luke Staiano, today issued a statement, which said: “Mrs Arafat wishes all relevant parties to assist and cooperate towards finding the truth and achieving a just outcome.”

The French firm has lodged a complaint before the French judicial authorities regarding the circumstances of Arafat’s death. The development follows a Swiss report that found elevated traces of a radioactive substance on the late leader’s belongings.

The inconclusive findings by Switzerland’s Institute of Radiation Physics were inconclusive, but they have prompted renewed theories that Arafat was poisoned with Polonium 210.

Palestinian president Mahmous Abbas has given his permission for the exhumation of Arafat’s body. He died in November 2004 in a French military hospital.