Free Republic

THE late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat controlled a network of companies, investments and bank accounts with a value totalling at least $1.9 billion, according to the Austrian business magazine Format. Quoting a Central Intelligence Agency report, it said yesterday the CIA had conducted inquiries after receiving information that a holding company of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation had invested $11.6 million in a small pharmaceutical company in the Canadian town of Belleville, Ontario. Format said investigators had "stepped on an anthill" when they uncovered the stake held by the Palestinian Commercial Service Corporation in Bioniche Life Sciences. They uncovered a whole...

The wife of ailing Yasser Arafat, Suha Arafat, may not have truly converted to Islam when she married the Palestinian leader, an issue that could be a major factor in the controversy surrounding the execution of his will and distribution of his fortune. Suha was a 27-year-old Christian at the time she married 61-year-old Yasser Arafat in 1990. Although she ostensibly converted to Islam in 1990, that conversion appears to be somewhat in doubt. According to a 2001 article by Danny Rubenstein in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, "Suha was quoted in several interviews as saying that she had only accepted...