Interpol involved in suspected Dubai assassination

Saturday 30th January, 2010

The Gulf is ablaze with news of the brazen assassination last week of one of the founders of a Hamas military arm in a hotel at Dubai.

The incident only became public on Friday, the day of the funeral of the murdered man at Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, near Damascus, in Syria (pictured).

The Israeli intelligence service is alleged by Hamas to have carried out the attack. Mossad agents had reportedly been pursuing the man for several years, and had previously attempted to assassinate him on two occasions, the most recent in Beirut six months ago when the man was poisoned and was unconscious for thirty hours.

Mahmoud Al Mabhouh, 50, one of the founders of the Hamas military wing, the Ezz Al Deen Al Qassam Brigades, had booked into the Al Bustan Rotana near Dubai International Airport on January 19. A day later he was found dead in his room.

Al Mabhouh reportedly was pedantic about security precautions due to the Mossad's intention of killing him. He reportedly barricaded his hotel door after checking in. Al Mabhour was on Israel's Most Wanted list being involved in the capture and subsequent death of two Israeli soldiers. He spent years in Israeli jails before being deported to Syria where he lived in exile. Gilbert Sa'adon, the mother of one of the soldiers Al Mabhouh was involved in capturing and killing, Ilan Sa’adon, said on Friday she was happy at the man's death but lamented that it came 20 years after her son's death. “I am happy that his death has been avenged, but sad that twenty years passed before this happened,” she told Israeli army radio.

Dubai Police say they are pursuing the killers. They say most of them entered and left the country using European passports. Dubai Police say they have identified the killers and have called on Interpol to assist in tracking them down. They have disclosed no information on the identity of the killers or who they may represent, other than saying they were a, "professional criminal gang."

The family of Al Mabhour who live in Gaza however say they have been told by Hamas that he died as the result of an assassination by the Mossad. Al Mabhouh’s brother, Fayeq, told the Al Jazeera network his family had been informed by Hamas and “people close to the UAE authorities” that his brother had been murdered.

“The information we have is that he was assassinated inside his hotel room,” he said. “He first received an electrical shock on the head and then he was strangled.”

The Al Mabhour family home in Gaza where the Hamas leader grew up was destroyed by Israeli bulldozers as retaliation.

Dubai Police Chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim said Al Mabhouh had traveled under a different name. "If we had been told of his presence, we would have provided him with the necessary protection," he told the Al Arabiya satellite channel.

Ahmed Yousef, a senior Hamas official in Gaza, said Friday night that the killing showed Israel “does not respect international law. It does not respect the sovereignty of other states. The country wants to show its hands can reach anywhere without being held accountable.”

Israel has a long history of assassinations within the Palestinian occupied territories, but has also carried out assassinations abroad. Israeli intelligences services have recently been blamed for car bombings claiming the lives of top militant figures in Beirut and in Damascus.

One notable attempt at an Israeli assassination in Jordan in 1997 was the attack on Hamas leader Khaled Meshal who was poisoned. Jordan's King Hussein, joined by then U.S. President Bill Clinton, insisted Israel hand over the antidote which it did, and Meshal survived.

Source: Malaysia Sun.
Link: http://story.malaysiasun.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/b8de8e630faf3631/id/595079/cs/1/.