Hamas leader slain by 18-member hit team, Dubai 99 per cent certain it was Mossad
Dubai police believe into the killing of the Hamas commander is almost certainly the work of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency.
So far, Israel has neither denied nor confirmed the allegation. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said there is no evidence Mossad was behind Mabhouh's murder; at the same time, he refused to issue any formal denial in line with his country’s "policy of ambiguity" on security matters.
On its website, the Abu Dhabi government-owned daily The National quoted Dubai police Chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, who is almost certain of Mossad involvement. The evidence, the latter said, suggests, “99 per cent, if not 100 per cent, that Mossad is standing behind the murder."
In the United Kingdom, the authorities have launched an inquiry into allegations that fake British passports were used by some of the members of the hit team that killed the Hamas leader.
The names of six of the eleven suspects, whose passport photos were released by Dubai officials (pictured), are the same as those of men who have dual British and Israeli citizenship.
They are Melvyn Adam Mildiner, Paul John Keeley, James Leonard Clarke, Stephen Daniel Hodes, Michael Lawrence Barney and Jonathan Lewis Graham.
All six claim that they have not left Israel and are “in shock” by the turn of events.
“The details are not correct. The date of birth is wrong. I went to bed with pneumonia and woke up a murderer," Mildiner said.
Hodes said he had not left Israel for two years.
Among the other five, three have an Irish passport. Irish authorities confirmed the numbers on suspects' passports were legitimate, but the documents did not match records for the names.
The remaining two passports are German and French.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was killed on 20 January in a Dubai hotel, was in the Emirates to buy weapons for Hamas. He was travelling without an escort because he was unable to purchase airfare in time for his bodyguards. Before landing in Dubai, he is said to have stopped in Tehran for a summit with Iranian officials. His body was found at 1.30 pm in a room of the luxury al-Bustan Hotel.
According to Dubai police, the members of the hit team arrived separately at least 19 hours prior to al-Mabhouh’s assassination, 14 hours before his arrival.
Police also identified several reportedly encrypted phone calls made from the suspects’ phones to numbers in Austria, where they think a command-and-control centre for the operation was based.
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