Israel 'assassinates' Hamas commander in Dubai

[Jigs]

Interpol issues arrest warrants for 11 over Dubai hit
Updated at: 0755 PST, Friday, February 19, 2010


DUBAI: Interpol has issued arrest warrants for 11 suspects accused of killing a senior Hamas official in Dubai last month.

The warrants were issued after Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim called on Interpol to issue "a red notice against the head of Mossad… as a killer in case Mossad is proved to be behind the crime, which is likely now."

According to Tamim, investigations have revealed that the Israeli spy agency Mossad was behind the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

“It is 99 percent, if not 100 percent certain that Mossad is behind the murder," he told the United Arab Emirates newspaper The National on Thursday.

On Monday, Dubai authorities launched an international manhunt for 11 suspects in the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed in his hotel room on January 19, hours after he arrived in Dubai from Syria.

The Dubai police identified 11 people, 10 men and a woman, suspected of killing the top Hamas official who had survived at least three other assassination attempts. According to the police, the suspects arrived in Dubai the day before the killing. Five of them carried out the crime while the remaining six served as lookouts, the police said.

Dubai police said on Monday that the 11 suspects had European passports: one French, three Irish, six British, and one German. A French national, identified as Peter Elvinger allegedly acted as the logistical mastermind in the Dubai hit.

Meanwhile, there are reports that Austrian phone numbers were apparently used to plan al-Mabhouh's assassination.

The Austrian Interior Ministry says the country's investigators are in touch with the Dubai police to try to get to the bottom of things. Media reports speculate that the killers used up to seven Austrian SIM cards or phone numbers while preparing for the hit.

Interpol issues arrest warrants for 11 over Dubai hit

As in Meir Dagan the director of Mossad ?

 

[Marxist]

France demanded on Thursday that Israel explain how a forged French passport came to be used by assassins suspected of killing a Hamas commander in Dubai last month.

he case has already caused diplomatic friction between Israel and European allies, with Britain urging Israel to cooperate with efforts to clear up the apparent use of faked British passports.

"We are asking for explanations from Israel's embassy in France over the circumstances of the use of a fake French passport in the assassination of a Hamas member in Dubai," the Foreign Ministry said in an electronic news briefing.

Forged British, Irish, German and French documents were used by 11 people named by the United Arab Emirates as suspects.

The French Foreign Ministry said it was cooperating with authorities in Dubai in the investigation, and the evidence obtained so far led it to conclude that the passport was forged.

 

[s90]

Mossad chief keeps to the shadows after Dubai killing

By Charly Wegman

JERUSALEM: As Israel finds itself under close scrutiny over the killing in Dubai of a top Hamas leader widely blamed on the Mossad, its top spy is doing what he does best, keeping to the shadows.

Mossad chief Meir Dagan, 65, has kept mum over growing claims the storied espionage agency was behind the January assassination.

He has also ignored demands that he step down over the incident which put Israel in the hot seat after Dubai police revealed the European passports used by the 11 suspects were fakes.

Last month’s killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top leader of the Palestinian movement Hamas, has widely been blamed on the Mossad, while Britain, France and Ireland are seeking explanations over the fake passports.

Several Israeli newspapers initially gloated over the killing, but media is now expressing concern over the potential diplomatic fallout.

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper has called for Dagan, who hopes for another extension of his mandate later this year, to step down over the affair, which some newspapers are now calling a fiasco.

A covert operations veteran, Dagan evidently has a vast number of enemies abroad, but he also has his detractors at home who have not forgiven him for firing a large number of Mossad officials after he took charge of the agency in 2002.

“There are also odd scores being settled between the media figures who say that this was an unprecedented ‘fiasco’ and the covert pursuers, but this is neither the time nor the place to discuss them,” the mass-selling Yediot Aharonot said on Thursday.

A commander of an armoured brigade during the 1982 Lebanon war, he was named in 2002 to lead the spy agency after he headed the electoral campaign that gave Ariel Sharon the premiership.

He is known to favour action over diplomacy and is said to have an influential voice in major foreign policy decisions.

A military reserve general, he has played a central role in efforts to counter Iran’s nuclear programme. Mossad focuses largely on battling groups Israel designates as terrorists, particularly the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, all supported by Iran.

Mossad never comments on claims it conducted a given hit, but it is widely believed to have been behind several such operations under Dagan’s leadership, including a car bombing in Damascus which killed Hebzollah military commander Imad Mughnieh two years ago.

Fingers also pointed to the Mossad after the 2007 bombing of a nuclear site in Syria and a December 2008 air raid on a truck convoy in Sudan allegedly carrying Iranian-supplied weapons destined for the Hamas government of the Gaza Strip.

And in January, Iran accused Israel and the United States of carrying out a bomb attack which killed one of its nuclear scientists.—AFP

 

[s90]

UK explanation is riddled with inconsistencies

By Robert Fisk

Collusion. That’s what it’s all about. The United Arab Emirates suspects – only suspects, mark you – that Europe’s “security collaboration” with Israel has crossed a line into illegality, where British passports (and those of other EU nations) can now be used to send Israeli agents into the Gulf to kill Israel’s enemies.

At 3.49pm on Tuesday afternoon (Beirut time), my Lebanese phone rang. It was a source – impeccable, I know him, he spoke with the authority I know he has in Abu Dhabi – to say that “the British passports are real. They are hologram pictures with the biometric stamp. They are not forged or fake. The names were really there. If you can fake a hologram or biometric stamp, what does this mean?”

The voice – I know the man and his origins well – wants to talk. “There are 18 people involved in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Besides the 11 already named, there are two Palestinians who are being interrogated and five others, including a woman. She was part of the team that staked out the hotel lobby.” Two hours later, an SMS arrives on my Beirut phone from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. It is the same source.

“ONE MORE THING,” it says in capital letters, then continues in lower case. “The command room of the operation was in Austria (sic, in fact, all things are “sic” in this report) … meaning the suspects when here did not talk to each other but thru the command room on separate lines to avoid detection or linking themselves to one another… but it was detected and identified OK??” OK? I ask myself.

My source is both angry and insistent. “We have sent out details of the 11 named people to Interpol. Interpol has circulated them to 188 countries – but why hasn’t Britain warned foreign nations that these people are using passports in these names?” There was more to come.

“We have identified five credit cards belonging to these people, all issued in the United States.” The man will not give the EU nationalities of the extra five – this would make two women involved in Mr Mabhouh’s murder. He said that EU countries were cooperating with the UAE, including the UK. But “not one of the countries we have been speaking to has notified Interpol of the passports used in their name. Why not?”

The source insisted that one of the names on a passport – the name of a man who denies any knowledge of its use – has travelled on it in Asia (probably Indonesia) and EU countries over the past year. The Emirates has proof that an American entered their country in June 2006 on a British passport issued in the name of a UK citizen who was already in prison in the Emirates. The Emirates claims that the passport of an Israeli agent sent to kill a Hamas leader in Jordan was a genuine Canadian passport issued to a dual national of Israel.

Intelligence agencies – who in the view of this correspondent are often very unintelligent – have long used false passports. Oliver North and Robert McFarlane travelled to Iran to seek the release of US hostages in Lebanon on passports that were previously stolen from the Irish embassy in Athens. But the Emirates’ new information may make some European governments draw in their breath – and they had better have good replies to the questions. Intelligence services – Arab, Israeli, European or American – often adopt an arrogant attitude towards those from whom they wish to hide. How could the Arabs pick up on a Mossad killing, if that is what it was? Well, we shall see.

Collusion is a word the Arabs understand. It speaks of the 1956 Suez War, when Britain and France cooperated with Israel to invade Egypt. Both London and Paris denied the plot. They were lying. But for an Arab Gulf country which suspects its former masters (the UK, by name) may have connived in the murder of a visiting Hamas official, this is apparently now too much. There is much more to come out of this story. We will wait to see if there are any replies in Europe. — The Independent News Service


http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-britains-explanation-is-riddled-with-inconsistencies-its-time-to-come-clean-1902994.html

 

[Solomon2]

Slain Hamas militant admitted role in killings

AFP - A slain militant of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas confessed to his involvement in the 1989 killings of two Israeli soldiers, in a video aired on Sunday more than two weeks after his death.

Mahmud al-Mabhuh, whose body was found in a luxury Dubai hotel room on January 20, said in the tape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television that he had been at the centre of the killings of Ilan Saadon and Avi Sasportas.

The two were abducted in separate incidents more than two decades ago.

Appearing on tape with his face hidden behind a scarf, Mabhuh detailed the kidnapping of Sasportas.

He other militants had disguised themselves as religious Jews to abduct the soldier, whose body was found in April 1989.

"Before burying him (Sasportas), we stripped him of his clothes and took his IDs, wallet ... and his personal weapon," Mabhuh said.

Saadon was kidnapped while hitchhiking south of Tel Aviv and taken to Gaza where he was killed.

"I pulled out my (38mm) revolver and pointed it at his (Saadon's) head to shoot him, but (my comrade) Abu Suhaib was faster than me. He shot him with his own pistol," Mabhuh said.

The militant, a founder of Hamas's armed wing, also said that he took precautions against the risks of Israeli retaliation but would be honoured to die a "martyr."

"I am always on alert, but only God decides the duration we live. I have chosen a path whose cost I was aware of, and I will be honoured to die a martyr," Mabhuh said in the tape.

Mabhuh said he had been the target of at least three assassination attempts but was saved by a keen intuition that earned him the nickname of "the fox."

Dubai's police chief has said Israel's spy agency Mossad may have been behind last month's killing, while his brother said Mabhuh, 50, who was based in Damascus, had been in Dubai on a tour to buy weapons for the Islamists.

***

How does Al-Jaz get a tape of a confession after the man is dead? Was it faked? Why release this tape to Al-Jazeera?

 

[Parashuram1]

The UAE is scared that Israel is trying to turn it into the Beirut of the middle east. As soon as this incident occurred, Jerusalem times ran an article about how insecure, unstable and dangerous the UAE is.

By the way, they used forged passports, they didn't use the passports of dual Israeli citizens. That is why the UK is so angry.

UAE as unstable? That is silly now. Infact, it is one of the most stable and safe countries in the region. They have a very good track record as compared to many other countries despite having some of the largest expatriate populations by ratio.

Apart from the fact that you and UAE don't really get along with the conflict over those islands, I don't think that UAE is involved in any other conflict.

 

[XYON]

These Israeli's got BALLS man!

Can't wait for the Movie to come out in a few years!

 

[prithwidw]

Even if Mossad was invloved, this was a serious lapse of proper planning.

 

[SMC]

This scumbag terrorist country (Israel) will get what it deserves in coming years. The humiliation and beating that it will get make me very happy from the inside.

 

[pak-marine]

another story of int Israeli terrorism .. ! Israel should be declared a terrorist state

 

[r3alist]

solomon, please go back to your friends of israel forum where you can bend over for them?

thanks.

 

[r3alist]

having said that we are all pretty much feeling our way around the dark, none of us can say with certainty about a world we dont know about, i dont think reading a few spy novels counts ROFL

maybe there was collusion?

maybe israel are being turned into the patsie?

who knows?

 

[s90]

Israeli Prime Minister approved Hamas hit

LONDON: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met members of a hit squad at Mossad headquarters shortly before they went to Dubai to kill a Hamas commander, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported.

Netanyahu was welcomed to Mossad by its chief Meir Dagan and briefed on plans to kill Mahmud al-Mabhuh, a top commander of the movement that rules Gaza, the paper said, quoting unnamed sources with knowledge of Mossad.

The prime minister reportedly authorised the mission, which was not seen as complicated or risky.

“Typically on such occasions, the prime minister intones: 'The people of Israel trust you. Good luck,'” the paper added.

It also quoted a source saying burns from a stun gun were found on the body of Mabhuh, a founder of Hamas's armed wing who was killed on a visit to Dubai, and that there were traces of a nose bleed, possibly from being smothered.

The high-profile killing has caused diplomatic tensions between Israel and four European countries — Britain, Ireland, France and Germany — whose fake passports were linked to the hit.

Interpol has issued arrest notices for 11 suspects, while Israel has shrugged off calls for Dagan to be arrested over the January 20 killing.

No government has directly accused Israel but Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim has said it was “most likely” Mossad was behind the crime and wants Dagan to bear responsibility if it was.

“The Dubai police have provided no incriminating proof,” a senior Israeli official told AFP Friday, asking not to be identified.

Mossad has used agents with fake passports for operations in the past.

Experts say it is highly unlikely that those who carried out the killing will ever be caught.


©2010 DAWN

 

[Always Neutral]

At the very least by launching this global hunt and giving this massive over the top response, all governments would think twice before using UAE as their sparring grounds. UAE has to maintain its high standards of security.

Yes agreed but what was this killer doing in Dubai in the first place? Nothing is going to happen as

1. Extradition cannot be done to countries with death penalty.

2. Interpol does not have office of its own anywhere in the world and the Scotland Yard equivalent of the local country acts on its behalf ie in this case the local Israeli Police.

Regards

 

[Vassnti]

Slain Hamas militant admitted role in killings


How does Al-Jaz get a tape of a confession after the man is dead? Was it faked? Why release this tape to Al-Jazeera?

The tape was made earlier but Hamas officials supposedly thought he could be identified from the tape and requested the interview be redone. Supposedly Mubhuh was going back to reshoot the tape and was unhappy with the additional risk, guess he was right. Seeing he was now dead i guess they figured identifying him from the origional tape was no longer a problem and released it.