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Subject: [AcademicsforJustice] Dubai murder- Israel faces Interpol arrest
warrants...European collusion? UK backlash
Israel must co-operate over fake passports, says David Miliband
By James Tapsfield, Press Association
Thursday, 18 February 2010, The Independent,
http://www.independent.co.uk/
In comments to be aired later on Dubai TV, police chief Dahi Khalfan
Tamim called for 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".
Robert Fisk: Britain's explanation is riddled with inconsistencies. It's
time to come clean
How could the Arabs pick up on a Mossad killing, if that is what it was?
Well, we shall see
Thursday, 18 February 2010, The Independent
Collusion. That's what it's all about. The United Arab Emirates suspect
- only suspect, mark you - that Europe's "security collaboration" with
Israel has crossed a line into illegality, where British passports (and
those of other other EU nations) can now be used to send Israeli agents
into the Gulf to kill Israel's enemies. At 3.49pm yesterday afternoon
(Beirut time, 1.49pm in London), 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
have 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 claim 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.
Death in Dubai: the plot thickens
Brown calls in police to investigate alleged identity theft by Mossad as
Israeli envoy asked to explain how passports were in killers' hands.
Assassination team now thought to number 18, including two women
By Kim Sengupta, Ben Lynfield and Donald Macintyre
Thursday, 18 February 2010, The Independent
The international furore over the assassination of a senior Hamas
official sharply escalated yesterday with claims that he had been lured
to Dubai by the Israeli intelligence services.
Security sources say that Mahmoud al-Mabhouh had changed his travel
plans, leaving behind his bodyguards, for a "meeting" which may have
been organised by Mossad, who had been tracking him for days before his
death.
The killers' use of European passports has led to widespread calls for
investigation, and the repercussions for Israel over its alleged
involvement in the murder began yesterday, with Gordon Brown announcing
an inquiry to be held by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca).
And in a sign of the increasing pressure on the Israeli authorities, the
country's ambassador to the UK will appear at the Foreign Office today
to face questions over how the passports of six Britons living in Israel
were used by a team of killers to travel to Dubai.
It is believed that British investigators will be flying to Dubai in the
next 24 hours to co-ordinate with the UAE authorities. No decision has
been made, however, on whether they will be going to Israel and no
approach had been made so far to the Israeli government. Neither the
French nor the German government has yet indicated whether it will
launch similar inquiries, although officials in Paris and Berlin said
they would be liaising with British authorities and "expected" the
Israeli government to furnish them with any relevant information.
It also emerged yesterday that there were as many as 18 people,
including two women, involved in the murder of Mr Mabhouh, who was said
to have been electrocuted and tortured before being suffocated. One line
of speculation was that the reason for the relatively prolonged attack,
after he was overpowered by four men, was an attempt to seek
information.
The Israeli government meanwhile broke its silence over the
assassination to insist that there was no reason to assume that Mossad
was responsible for the death. Its Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman
did not actually deny Israeli involvement but said: "There is no reason
to think that it was the Israeli Mossad, and not some other intelligence
service or country up to some mischief."
Mr Lieberman said that Israel maintains a "policy of ambiguity" on
detailed intelligence matters, adding: "Israel never responds, never
confirms, never denies."
And he denied that what happened could lead to diplomatic problems with
the UK, insisting that "Britain recognises that Israel is a responsible
country and that our security activity is conducted according to very
clear, cautious and responsible rules of the game".
But not everyone in Israel is as supportive of the security services.
There have been some calls for the Mossad head Meir Dagan's resignation
over the affair. "If we did the identity theft then it was the most
idiotic thing imaginable," said Zahava Galon, a former MP from the
liberal Meretz party. "It's getting innocent people with no connection
to the [assassination] act into trouble. These are people who woke up in
the morning and didn't know what hit them. These people have a problem."
But Rafi Eitan, a former cabinet minister who as a Mossad agent took
part in the 1960 capture of the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann,
suggested a foreign power "wanted to taint Israel". "The Mossad was not
behind the assassination of Mahmoud al- Mabhouh, but rather a foreign
organisation that is trying to frame Israel," he said. "It took the
names of Israeli citizens, doctored the passports... and thus tainted
us."
Mr Brown said: "We have got to carry out a full investigation into this.
The British passport is an important document that has got to be held
with care. The evidence has got to be assembled about what actually
happened and how it happened and why it happened, and it is necessary
for us to conclude that before we can make statements."
The Israeli government declined to comment on the British decision, and
it remained unclear how effective such an inquiry is likely to be.
Israeli officials in the UK can refuse to meet detectives with the claim
of diplomatic immunity, and there was no sign yesterday whether
investigators would get any official cooperation in Israel.
William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, has sent a series of
questions to the Foreign Secretary David Miliband, saying: "The reports
that the identities of real British citizens have been 'cloned' to
produce forged passports is a matter of great concern, since it raises
the possibility that this could happen in other cases, including acts of
terrorism. We need to know if the Home Secretary and the Foreign
Secretary are confident that existing mechanisms are sufficient to
prevent further such abuses from happening."
Questions and answers: What do we know so far about the Dubai
assassination?
Q. What exactly happened to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh?
A. When the Hamas militant arrived in Dubai, he may have believed he was
there to meet an Iranian arms dealer. Six hours later, he was dead,
assassinated after a sophisticated operation involving 18 people. The
hit squad had arrived in Dubai the previous day. After tailing Mabhouh
from the airport, CCTV footage shows two of the group entering a hotel
lift with him; one then followed him to find out in which room he was
staying. Shortly afterwards, another operative booked the room opposite
for that night. When the target left his room, four men crossed the
corridor to break in, while others stood guard in the lobby. Mabhouh
returned at 8.24pm; police say he was asphyxiated soon after. His
killers left the hotel about 20 minutes later.
Q. Who were the people behind the operation, and why were there so many?
A. One theory suggests that having lured Mabhouh to Dubai on the pretext
of an arms sale, the hit squad had expected him to be accompanied by a
security team, who would also need to be eliminated. The identities of
the assassins remain a mystery. All the passports of the initial batch
of 11 suspects have been declared fake. So far seven people living in
Israel, including Britons, have said that their identities were stolen,
adding fuel to theories that Mossad was behind the assassination.
Yesterday the existence of seven more suspects emerged: of those, two
are believed to be Palestinian and are in custody; the other five, one
of them a woman, used EU passports.
Q. Why would Israel want Mabhouh dead?
A. The Palestinian had admitted to a role in the deaths of two Israeli
soldiers in 1989 during the first Intifada, and still played a senior
role in Hamas. There has been speculation that he was at the top of a
"hit list" of militants believed to be dangerous to Israel. And while
the Netanyahu government yesterday said there was no proof that Mossad
was behind the assassination, it refused to refute the accusation,
citing a "policy of ambiguity". Some commentators in Israel have called
for the head of Mossad to resign. The counter-argument is that the Dubai
operation appeared too ham-fisted to be the work of Mossad, and that it
is instead the work of Israel's enemies seeking to discredit the
Netanyahu government.
Q. If firm evidence emerges implicating Israel, what will the
consequences be?
A. The potential for diplomatic fall-out is clear, with Gordon Brown
demanding an inquiry yesterday into how British passports came to be
used. There have been similar concerns voiced in Dublin and Paris. The
Dubai authorities are inevitably furious at the idea of the country
being used as a staging ground for assassinations. Even Vienna has been
dragged in, with the hit squad using pre-paid Austrian mobile phone
numbers. Israel is already feeling the international heat after the
critical Goldstone report into its conduct during the Gaza war, and will
not want its critics to have more ammunition.
Leading article: A murky affair that calls for a tougher British
response
The use of forged passports to facilitate murder is not to be taken
lightly
Thursday, 18 February 2010, The Independent
When Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his room at a Dubai hotel on
20 January, few doubted that he had been assassinated. A military
commander with the Palestinian group Hamas, he had escaped attempts on
his life in the past. As for who had done it, there seemed two clear
possibilities: either Israel's security service, Mossad, or a hostile
grouping from among the fractious Palestinians. Either would have a
motive, but the safer money seemed to be on Mossad.
Such a blatant political killing in the deceptive safety of Dubai should
have been loudly condemned as an international outrage in its own right.
But with the culprits long gone and the deed presumed to belong to the
shadowy world of secret agents, it was soon eclipsed in the news cycle.
And it would have remained so had not the UAE authorities released CCTV
footage of the presumed death squad, along with details of the passports
they had used, in an appeal for international help to solve the murder.
An already murky story had suddenly become a lot murkier. Not only that,
but there was a distinct British and European Union angle. All 11
passports made public were from EU countries, and no fewer than six were
British. Yesterday, it was disclosed that there were at least another
seven members of the team, including two with Palestinian papers, and
that Mr Mabhouh may have been lured to Dubai with the inducement of an
Iranian arms deal.
The story turned murkier still when those Britons identified by their
passports turned out to be resident in Israel, categorically denied ever
visiting the UAE, and professed themselves horrified at what appeared to
be the fraudulent use of their passport details. The sordid killing in
Dubai now seemed to have not only a strong link to Israel but
implications that went beyond Middle Eastern politics. Either a slew of
Britons had been recruited to a regional hit squad, or - more likely -
someone was using British identities for their own nefarious ends.
The signs now seemed to point even less ambiguously to Mossad, which had
tried a similar trick with Canadian passports in 1997 in a (failed)
attempt to kill another Hamas leader in Jordan. So what was the British
government's response to the fact that someone had fraudulently
reproduced British passports, and that this someone was quite possibly
the security service of a friendly country?
Well, the Prime Minister called for a "full investigation" into how
pseudo-British passports were allegedly used by Mr Mabhouh's killers -
which sounded all very civilised and not terribly urgent. And had the
Foreign Office made any representations to Israel? No it had not. Nor,
it initially said, were there plans to do so - though the ambassador is
now being called in today. Even accepting that suspects are innocent
until proved guilty, this looks like extraordinarily supine behaviour in
a situation where, in essence, the good name of our country has been
impugned.
By making public some of the - impressive - evidence it has collected,
the UAE seems to be saying that it wants to end the Gulf's growing
reputation as a soft touch for other people's assassins. By showing the
sophistication of its record-keeping, the UAE may hope to discourage
others. But if political murder is now unacceptable to Dubai, how much
more unacceptable should it be to the British government? Those false
passports call for a much more muscular response than has so far been
forthcoming.
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