Arafat poisoning investigations dropped by France

French judges yesterday dropped an investigation into claims Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned.

Arafat died in Paris in 2004, aged 75 and his wife Suha, who lives in Malta, says he was poisoned, possibly by highly radioactive polonium.

The claims were seemingly backed up by tests carried out in Switzerland.

But a statement by prosecutors in Nanterre, near Paris. said polonium poisoning had "not been demonstrated" and that they would not continue their inquiries.

"At the end of the investigation ... it has not been demonstrated that Mr Yasser Arafat was murdered by polonium-210 poisoning," the three judges ruled on Wednesday, according to the prosecutor at Nanterre court near Paris.

The decision was blasted as biased by lawyers for Arafat's widow Suha and rejected by the Palestinian Authority's own inquiry committee.

Arafat died in Percy military hospital near Paris aged 75 in November 2004 after developing stomach pains while at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

In 2012, an investigation by al-Jazeera TV, in conjunction with Swiss analysts in Lausanne, found abnormal levels of polonium-210 on his personal effects.

Suha Arafat then called for her late husband's body to be exhumed.

Three teams of French, Swiss and Russian investigators were allowed to take samples from Arafat's tomb in Ramallah.

But, earlier this year, one French prosecutor said the polonium samples were of an environmental nature.

"We'll continue our investigation to reach the killer of Arafat, until we know how Arafat was killed," Tawfiq Tirawi, the head of the Palestinian Authority's inquiry, told the AFP agency.