Kidon Team Executes Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai
February 17th, 2010There are several articles about this operation making the rounds at the moment. Here are a few, as well as some CCTV video from the hotel where Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was assassinated:
Assassins Had Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Sight as Soon as He Got to Dubai
Via: Telegraph:
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh took no notice of the two men who joined him in the lift of his hotel in Dubai during the short ride to the second floor on the afternoon of January 20.
One was short and portly with a moustache, the other tall. Dressed in sports gear and carrying tennis rackets, they looked like any other European tourists visiting the Gulf state for some winter sun.
He did not realise that the two men were part of an 11-strong team that had come to kill him. In just over five hours he would be dead.
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Dubai Killers Stole Identities, Used Faked Passports
Via: Guardian:
A hit squad that murdered a senior Hamas official in Dubai used the stolen identities of six British citizens and faked at least five other European passports, it emerged today.
The international investigation into the assassination of Mahmoud al Mabhouh last month is certain to examine the role played by Israel, where four of the victims of identity theft, three Britons and a German, currently live.
Some reports last night suggested that a team of 17 people were involved in the meticulously planned killing, of whom six have yet to be identified.
UK authorities issued the British passports used by the assassins in Dubai last month, official sources said. They confirmed the killers had not altered the names and numbers in the passports, but the photographs had been changed.
At least five of the Britons whose identities were used by the assassins in Dubai live in Israel. All deny any involvement.
“I am obviously angry, upset and scared – any number of things,” Melvyn Mildiner told Reuters. “And I’m looking into what I can do to try to sort things out and clear my name.”
Israeli television named two other British-Israelis whose identities were used, Paul Keeley and Stephen Hodes, and a German passport holder, Michael Bodenheimer.
The revelation fuelled already widespread speculation in the region over Mossad involvement in the killing of Mabhouh and an elaborately orchestrated plot involving 11 assassins mostly posing as tourists in Dubai, with some wearing wigs and false beards.
Mabhouh was one of the founders of Hamas’s military wing and had been wanted by Israel for his role in the 1989 kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers on leave. His participation was acknowledged by Hamas last month.
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Dubai Hamas Assassination: How it Was Planned
Via: Telegraph:
Dressed in tennis gear and carrying racquets and balls, the guests who wandered through the lobby of Dubai’s al-Bustan Rotana hotel on Jan 19 couldn’t have looked less threatening.
But within hours they and nine accomplices had carried out the ruthlessly efficient assassination of the Hamas military Commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who had just a few seconds’ warning of his fate as the killers overpowered him in his room.
Police in Dubai believe the murder bears the hallmarks of a meticulously-planned operation by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, though Israel has so far refused to say whether it was involved.
What is beyond doubt, however, is that the alleged hit team, travelling on forged British, Irish, German and French passports, spent no more than 19 hours in the Gulf state, killing Mr Mabhouh just five hours after he had flown in from Syria.
After trawling through dozens of hours of CCTV footage, investigators have been able to piece together a minute-by-minute reconstruction of how the hit unfolded.
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