AFP – Dubai’s police chief said on Sunday that Israel’s spy agency Mossad could have been behind the murder of a top Hamas leader in a Dubai hotel room.
“It could be Mossad, or another party,” police chief Dhahi Khalfan told AFP.
“Personally, I don’t exclude any possibility. I don’t exclude any party that has an interest in the assassination” of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhuh, he said.
“There were seven or more people holding passports from different European countries” in the group suspected of killing Mabhuh, Khalfan said.
He refused to name the countries, but added, “we are currently in contact with these European countries to verify the authenticity of the passports.”
The hardline Palestinian Hamas movement on Friday accused Israel of killing Mabhuh, who was found dead in his hotel room in Dubai on January 20, and vowed revenge.
Hamas has acknowledged that Mabhuh was in Dubai to buy weapons for Hamas in its struggle against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.
Khalfan said that “it seems (Mabhuh) opened the door” of his room, letting his killers in. “Mabhuh was suffocated,” he said, adding that “strangulation is possible.”
According to Khalfan, Mabhuh entered the United Arab Emirates a day before his death using a passport that did not bear his family name.
“We were not informed by Hamas about the visit,” he said. “It is strange that a person of his importance travelled alone.”
Khalfan met Palestinian Consul General Hussein Abdul Khaliq in Dubai on Sunday to discuss the murder, saying police would “work day and night” to track down the suspects, the official WAM news agency reported.
Israeli newspapers, meanwhile, hailed the killing, with the rightwing English-language Jerusalem Post calling it “another blow to the ‘axis of evil’” that will make it harder for Hamas to get arms into its Gaza stronghold.
On Sunday, The Times of London cited unidentified Middle Eastern sources as saying that Mabhuh’s body was found by staff at the luxury Al Bustan Rotana hotel.
The paper said Mabhuh was travelling on a false passport and on arrival in Dubai was followed by two men described by local police as “Europeans carrying European passports.”
The hit squad injected Mabhuh with a drug that induced a heart attack, photographed all the documents in his briefcase and left a “do not disturb” sign on the door, The Times said.
It added that the Hamas leader was on a mission to buy arms from Iran, and was tracked from the moment he boarded Emirates flight EK 912 from Damascus on January 18.
Mabhuh, a founder of Hamas’ military wing, was in charge of arms purchases for the group.
Over the years, a number of Hamas leaders have died in operations Israel calls “targeted killings.”
In 2004, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed in an Israeli helicopter gunship attack in Gaza. One month later, another Hamas leader in Gaza, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, was killed when two missiles hit his car.
Israel has also targeted Palestinian leaders outside Israel and the Occupied Territories.
In 1997, Israeli agents tried to murder Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman by injecting him with poison, while in 1995, Mossad succeeded in killing the head of Islamic Jihad, Fathi Shiqaqi, in Malta.
In 1988, Israeli commandos killed Abu Jihad, Yasser Arafat’s right-hand man, in Tunis.
And in 1973, commandos, among them future prime minister and current defence minister Ehud Barak, killed three Palestinian Liberation Organisation leaders in Beirut.
Dubai, a rich and glitzy city-state in the UAE federation, has exposed its murkier side with several high-profile murders in recent years.
Sulim Yamadayev, a bitter foe of pro-Russia Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead there in March 2009.
In January 2003, Dubai-based businessman Sharad Shetty, suspected to be a close associate of Indian underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, was shot in a gangland-style killing at Dubai’s India Club.
Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim was found dead in her Dubai home in July 2008. She had been stabbed and her face was mutilated.
I am the one of those who rally against the status quo: The Capitalist Hegemony. I take side with those who are oppressed world-wide. The Capitalists should end intervention in the Muslim World. If not, resistance is inevitable by any means possible. As promised through revelation, they will rise Caliphate which is feared and prevented by the Capitalist power. Capitalist agents/ puppet rulers will be removed throughout the Muslim World.
