Mid-East Realities | www.middleeast.org |
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Arafat's
personal doctor "demands"
MIDDLEEAST.ORG - MER - Washington - 12 November:
They are racing now to get
the funeral over with very quickly and with no real opportunity for the
public outpouring of grief and anger that would result if everything
were not so closed and controlled by the military. And they are
racing as well to get him quickly buried in a rock tomb.
His 'wife' has received a huge payoff, $22 million yearly, for her
silence. The top 'new leadership' of the Palestinians that has
approved these arrangements are all known to be persons closely
connected with the Israelis and supported by the U.S. -- Nabil Sha'ath,
Abu Mazen, and Abu Ala -- and all known themselves to be politically
and financially corrupt.OFFICIAL INQUIRY and AUTOPSY ARAFAT'S 'wife' receives huge money payoff for silence The
planned 25-minute ceremony at a military club in a After the
funeral, Arafat's coffin will be taken to the Almaza military
CAIRO, Egypt (AP Nov 11, 8:51 PM (ET) By NADIA ABOU EL-MAGD - Egypt prepared Thursday for a strictly controlled military funeral for Yasser Arafat where dignitaries from around the world will pay their respects, but where the people - among whom Arafat was by far more popular - will be mostly shut out. The planned 25-minute ceremony at a military club in a Cairo suburb reflects concern for security at an event expected to draw dozens of statesmen and foreign ministers. But Egypt also apparently sought to avoid an outpouring of public emotion that might either get out of control or show that the late Palestinian leader enjoyed more support than other Arab leaders. Arafat's coffin, flown from a Paris military base, arrived in Cairo late Thursday. Authorities mounted a maximum security operation around the airport, increasing police guards and stationing observers on tall buildings. A military honor guard carried Arafat's coffin, walking in formation from the plane to a hearse. Suzanne Mubarak, wife of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, hugged Arafat's widow, Suha, after she alighted. Egypt's foreign minister was also there. Arafat's coffin was to be taken to the nearby Galaa Club, a compound that includes a hospital, mosque and social club for military officers. It was to be held overnight in the hospital and was to go to a mosque at the club on Friday morning for the funeral. The service originally was planned for a mosque on the grounds of Cairo's international airport, but was switched to the military club for logistical reasons. Egypt stepped in to host the service for Arafat, who died early Thursday, because it would be politically difficult for Arab leaders to travel to the Israeli-controlled Palestinian territories for a ceremony. Security forces also were clustered under downtown overpasses near the square, and a large photograph of Mubarak beneath one bridge - once vandalized when a demonstration got out of hand - had been taken down. The U.S. Embassy in Cairo warned Americans to avoid areas where spontaneous protests might occur, including downtown Tahrir Square. The club where the funeral will be held takes its name from the British military withdrawal from Egypt in 1953 - "galaa" is the Arabic word for evacuation - and it is located in the district of Heliopolis, where Mubarak lives. At the funeral, special prayers for the dead will be led by Egypt's top Muslim cleric, the Grand Sheik of Al-Azhar Mohammed Sayed Tantawi. "I would like to draw your attention to something that is very important: It's an official military funeral and not open to the public," Col. Ahmed Assem of the Interior Ministry told viewers of Egypt's state-run television. After the funeral, Arafat's coffin will be taken to the Almaza military base near the club and then flown to Ramallah in the West Bank, Gen. Abdel Fattah Badran said. Arafat will be buried there before sunset Friday. The short drive from the club to the base is likely to be the public's only opportunity to see Arafat's coffin pass. Security officials said Arafat's body would be borne by a horse-drawn carriage for some of the way. If Arafat's body were to be brought into the center of Cairo, it might draw the biggest funeral crowd since the death of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser in 1970. That would involve a security risk, and also a prestige risk that few Arab leaders are willing to take, said Walid Kazziha, a politics professor at the American University in Cairo. "Other Arab leaders, would they like to see Arafat commanding this much support, even in death?" Kazziha asked. The heads of state expected to attend include those of Jordan, Yemen, Algeria, Egypt, South Africa, Indonesia and Lebanon. Numerous foreign ministers, including Jack Straw of Britain, Michel Barnier of France and Joschka Fischer of Germany, have said they will attend, as has European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana. Assistant Secretary of State William Burns will represent the United States. The Israeli Embassy in Cairo said it would not be represented. [MER - Note that
this IHT article while raising some questions carefully avoids noting
that Arafat was blood poisoned and that his personal doctor has demanded
a 'public inquiry'. There is no mention of possible Israeli assassination,
but rather an out-of-place suggestion about something
'embarrassing'. The article appears to be more a part of the
overall coverup than a serious journalistic attempt to get to the bottom of things].
Secrecy surrounds diagnosis By Elisabeth Rosenthal International Herald Tribune Friday, November 12, 2004 PARIS - Even after Yasser Arafat's death Thursday morning, French health officials continued their stony silence about exactly what disease killed the Palestinian leader. And so, the man who lived so much of his life simply and in the public eye, died mysteriously, surrounded by secrecy. After two weeks, the medical databases at Percy Military Training Hospital in Clamart must be crammed with information about Arafat's condition - scans, biopsies, reams of blood test results - that would have defined for doctors within minutes the condition of Arafat's kidneys, liver and lungs. But these remain top secret. The hospital officially announced Arafat's death in a terse statement delivered by the hospital spokesman, General Christian Estripeau, who told reporters there would be no details released on tests, the cause of death or whether there would be an autopsy. When reached by telephone later on Thursday, Estripeau said there would be "no information." In fact, all the information about Arafat's sudden death that has dribbled out comes from his Palestinian aides, who provide facts through a non-medical and highly politicized filter. These few misshapen puzzle pieces are insufficient to create a picture of what went wrong. As their beloved leader deteriorated in the past two days, Arafat's aides announced only that he was in a deep coma on life-support machines, having suffered a brain hemorrhage - a stroke caused by bleeding into the brain. But such a fatal event can have many underlying causes, and does not explain why Arafat's health had deteriorated so precipitously in the past month. In France, a patient or the next-of-kin must give permission for doctors to release information. In his carefully worded statements, Estripeau suggested that this permission was not given: "It is not up to the defense forces' health services to reveal information given to the family," he said today. Strokes are generally sudden affairs, and Arafat's was almost certainly a secondary result of his underlying and undisclosed illness. At the time of his medical evacuation to Paris two weeks ago, aides revealed that he was suffering from a low platelet count and had undergone a platelet transfusion. Since platelets are involved in blood clotting, patients with low platelet counts are predisposed to brain hemorrhages, and this may have contributed to Arafat's death. But low platelet counts in the blood are a common finding in a wide range of illnesses, including severe infections, liver disease, end-stage cancer, and even AIDS. And doctors made no mention of a hemorrhage until Wednesday, suggesting that it was a recent event. On Nov. 4, doctors and aides announced that Arafat was being transferred to the intensive care unit because his condition had deteriorated. No mention of a brain hemorrhage was made at that time, although such bleeding would have been immediately obvious on a CAT scan. It is accepted medical practice throughout the world that patients or their families have the right to keep medical information private. In France, politicians and celebrities frequently keep their medical lives secret, but in many countries, such as the United States, public figures are expected to reveal private health information and hospitals tend to encourage it. "There can be tension between what the public would like to know and what the family feels comfortable talking about, but our policy is that the privacy of the patient and the patient's family comes first and is paramount," said Myrna Manners, spokesperson for the New York-Presbyterian Hospital, which has treated many world leaders including the Shah of Iran. But, she added: "Rather than have rumors or speculation run amok, we feel its better to have a clear process and a bit of information. We encourage that." There are various reasons why Arafat's inner circle would want to keep the cause of his death a secret. Perhaps he suffered from a disease that they considered embarrassing. Or perhaps the doctors who treated him during the early phases of his illness in Ramallah missed a treatable medical condition, letting him deteriorate to the point it was too late to cure him once he was moved to Paris. In the end, the actual timing of his death - like in much of his life - was probably tinged with a hefty dose of politics and religion. At some point after he was transferred to intensive care, Arafat was placed on a ventilator, a machine that assists in breathing. Such assistance can be required because of lung problems - like pneumonia - or in cases where the brain-centers that control breathing are not functioning properly. Both deep comas and large strokes can damage these centers temporarily and require that a patient be placed on a machine. Once a patient's breathing is maintained by a ventilator, the exact timing of death often becomes something of a matter of choice. More important, it also becomes subject to religious variations concerning the ethics of caring for terminally ill patients. Islamic scholars have generally prohibited the discontinuation of life support machines, since the Koran advises: "Don't throw yourself into death." Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign minister, reacted violently to press reports yesterday that Palestinian officials had arrived in Paris to "pull the plug" on Arafat. "We don't accept euthanasia," he said, Arafat "is in the hands of God." But in France, as in much of the world, death is now defined by the death of the brain, or "brain death." A patient on a ventilator can be breathing and have a pumping heart- at least for some time - even though he is medically and legally dead. Many Islamic scholars say that a patient can be disconnected from life support once he is brain dead, since he is no longer really alive. But some conservative Muslim groups, as well as many conservative Jews, still maintain that the person lives so long as the heart is beating. It is not known if Arafat was removed from life-support machines or if his heart stopped beating while he was still on them.
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Mid-East Realities | www.middleeast.org |
Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2004/11/1191.htm |