French experts rule out 'foul play' in Yasser Arafat's death

French experts have ruled out poisoning as the cause of iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's death in 2004, a prosecutor said.

The prosecutor of the western Paris suburb of Nanterre said that the experts had not discovered any evidence of foul play in Arafat's death, reported The Guardian.

The findings echoed those of Russian experts but a Swiss team had earlier claimed that the "poison theory" was "more consistent" with their own test results.

A centre in the Swiss city of Lausanne had discovered "abnormal levels of polonium," an extremely radioactive toxin, after examining biological samples taken from Arafat's personal belongings given to his widow after his death. However, they stopped short of asserting that he had been poisoned by the substance.

The French experts, on the other hand, maintained that the polonium 210 and lead 210 found in Arafat's grave and in the samples were of an environmental nature, Nanterre prosecutor Catherine Denis said.

Arafat died at the age of 75 on November 11, 2004 at the Percy de Clamart hospital in Paris. He had been admitted there at the end of October after he complained of stomach pains while at his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where he had lived since December 2001, surrounded by the Israeli army.

His death triggered immediate and enduring conspiracy rumours.

Arafat's widow, Suha, filed a complaint at a court in Nanterre in 2012, claiming that her husband was assassinated.