Killed Hamas leader was involved in weapons smuggling

Tel Aviv - A senior Hamas operative found dead in Dubai on January 20 was involved in smuggling weapons and funds to the Gaza Strip, the Hamas website and Israeli media reports said SUnday. Hamas has blamed Israel for the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, whose body was found in a hotel room in the United Arab Emirates. The London Sunday Times claimed Sunday that al-Mabhouh was injected with a heart-attack-inducing drug and photographed all the documents in his suitcase.

But al-Mabhouh's brother told the Israeli Ha'aretz daily that a medical team had determined the cause of death as a massive electric shock sustained to the head. Doctors had also found evidence of strangulation, he said.

Hamas maintains an Israeli hit team infiltrated Dubai on forged passports, as part of the entourage of Israeli Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau, who visited the emirate to participate in a conference on renewable energy.

Landau termed the Hamas allegations "the wild eastern imagination going hand in hand with Palestinian anger about an Israeli flag flying over Abu Dhabi."

Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said that by assassinating al-Mabhouh, Israel was seeking to take its confrontation with Hamas to the international arena and warned that the Jewish state would "bear the consequences of its actions."

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/306765,killed-hamas-leader-was-involved-in-weapons-smuggling.html.