French investigative magistrates have decided to drop an inquiry into the death of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, whose widow alleges he was poisoned, the prosecutor's office said on Wednesday. A lawyer for Suha Arafat, who has argued that her husband's death in France in 2004 was a political assassination, told Reuters that they would challenge the decision in an appeals court. Yasser Arafat, who signed the 1993 Oslo interim peace accord with Israel but led an uprising after subsequent talks broke down in 2000, died in a French hospital four weeks after falling ill, at the age of 75. The official cause of death was a massive stroke, but French doctors were unable at the time to determine the origin of the illness and no autopsy was carried out. An investigation was opened in August 2012 at the request of Suha Arafat, and the remains were exhumed and examined separately by French, Russian and Swiss experts. The Swiss reported their results were consistent with, but not proof of, poisoning by reactive polonium. The French concluded that Arafat did not die of poisoning and the Russian experts reportedly found no traces of polonium.
