But once the concrete was finally hacked through, Arafat's remains were in no state to be moved. Instead the coffin was lifted out for Palestinian doctors, working under the watchful eye of the foreign scientists, to take about 20 samples to be tested for poisons as well as polonium. Then it was resealed and reburied.
snip
Suha Arafat refused to permit an autopsy at the time. But earlier this year she gave some of her late husband's personal items, including his toothbrush, underwear and kaffiyeh to Al Jazeera television which sent them to Switzerland for tests. The Institut de Radiophysique discovered abnormal levels of polonium-210.
The tests were inconclusive, however, and so Suha Arafat, a French citizen, asked the French government to launch a murder inquiry. The Palestinian Authority, suspicious of Arafat's widow – who is not a popular figure among Palestinians in part in part because she is regarded as having enriched herself – and the French and Swiss experts she hired, called in Russian scientists to do separate analysis.
This week, French magistrates have been questioning Palestinian officials who were besieged with Arafat in the Muqata because it's unlikely the PLO leader's food or drink could have been poisoned without a collaborator in the building.
The Israelis had an opportunity to interfere with food deliveries which passed through their checkpoints during the siege.
But they had no way of knowing who would be eating what and the fact that there was no mass poisoning inside the Muqata would mean that Arafat's food was contaminated by someone with direct access to it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/27/yasser-arafat-exhumed-reburied-night Bold type mine.
Let me get this straight. Suha said no to a autopsy when he died. Then earlier this year gave some of his personnel items for testing. That is when they found the polonium.
