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A bumbling Mossad hand suspected in Dubai assassination

Israel has refused to comment on whether it sent the team that killed Mahmoud Mabhouh, a Hamas military commander, but as evidence mounts and Interpol issues warrants, questions are multiplying.

February 19, 2010|By Borzou Daragahi
  • Ali Ali / EPA

Reporting from Beirut — To its planners, the assassination of senior Hamas figure Mahmoud Mabhouh must have first seemed like the perfect spy operation.

They slipped into Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, on fraudulent travel papers. They quietly killed the militant leader long wanted by Israel, reportedly smothering him with a pillow, and discreetly left the country.

But now the entire episode appears to have gone terribly out of control, more Coen brothers than John le Carre, with police releasing images of the alleged operatives in shorts and baseball caps traipsing around the corridors of the hotel where Mabhouh stayed, fumbling with their bags and looking straight at surveillance cameras.

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Interpol issued arrest warrants Thursday for 11 suspects in the attack, and Dubai's chief of police bluntly accused Israel's Mossad spy agency of being behind the assassination.

The incident is damaging already strained relations between the Jewish state and the Persian Gulf nations that Washington is pressing to recruit in its confrontation with Iran.

Israeli officials continued their policy of refusing to comment on whether the Mossad was behind the Jan. 19 assassination. But to Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad case officer, it seemed clear that it was.

"This assassination right now has caused more harm to the state of Israel than this guy could have done in a lifetime," said Ostrovsky, author of "By Way of Deception," a book critical of the Mossad.

"It's their job to make themselves look good," said Ostrovsky, who now serves as chief executive of Thebookpatch.com, a website based in Scottsdale, Ariz. "But they still live in a 1983 movie. It's a reflection of an entire intelligence society that is stuck in their days of glory."

Dubai's police chief, Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, offered no new evidence but told the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper the National that Mossad "is 99%, if not 100%, . . . behind the murder" of the 50-year-old Mabhouh.

In a statement posted on his department's website, Tamim said that Dubai authorities had more evidence, "apart from the tapes and photos" already disclosed.

Interpol issued 11 "red notices" to its 188 member states for the arrest of the slaying suspects and also urged law enforcement authorities to try to clear the names of seven Israelis whose identities were allegedly stolen for the attack. "Interpol does not believe that we know the true identities of these wanted persons," Ronald K. Noble, secretary general of Interpol, said in a statement.

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