Almanar
22/02/2010 The European Union is "extremely concerned" at the use of European passports in the killing of a Hamas commander in Dubai with Israel's top envoy set to face tough questioning in Brussels.
"We are extremely concerned that European passports... can be used in a different manner for a different purpose," Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency, told reporters as he arrived for a meeting with his EU counterparts in Brussels on Monday.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was due to meet Moratinos and several fellow European foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday, seeking to reassure them over the use of British, Irish, French and German passports in the assassination of Mahmud al-Mabhuh in January.
"We are going to discuss it and I hope we will issue a statement expressing our concern about this situation," said Moratinos ahead of the talks.
Deputy Israel Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said on Saturday that he foresaw no crisis in Israel's relations with Europe over the use of foreign passports in the murder as it had nothing to do with it. But Britain, Ireland, France and Germany have called in Israeli envoys for talks at their foreign ministries after passports from those countries were implicated in the killing.
Amid mounting diplomatic tension, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who will also meet Lieberman, has urged the Israelis to cooperate "fully" in investigating the incident.
While Miliband did not speak to reporters as he arrived for the EU talks, his Luxembourg counterpart Jean Asselborn said the culprits must be punished. Such political assassinations "have no place in the 21st century," he added.
Dubai police say they believe Israeli agents carried out the assassination and have released the identities of 11 people travelling on passports from Britain, Ireland, France and Germany who they say were involved.
Several of those people have denied any role or ever having visited Dubai, leading investigators to suggest the Israel's overseas spy agency Mossad copied the passports and amended them to allow the assassins to enter the Emirate under false identities and carry out the assassination.
In the meantime, An Israeli newspaper reported on Monday that an Israeli who shares the name of a member of the death squad has disappeared. Up until Saturday the name Michael Bodenheimer could be seen on a sign at an office building in the seaside of Tel Aviv but the plaque has since been taken down, Israel's mass-selling Yediot Aharonot said. It published photos of the nameplate to support the claim.
The man has not been interviewed by media since his name appeared on one of several European passports, a Palestinian Hamas commander. Unlike the other passports, the German passport bearing Bodenheimer's name was apparently not forged, according to a report Saturday in Germany's Der Spiegel magazine.
Last week Israeli media interviewed another Michael Bodenheimer, an ultra-Orthodox Jew living in another suburb of Tel Aviv, who denied any involvement in the affair. He also bore no resemblance to the passport photo presented by Dubai police.
The UK Sunday Times newspaper reported on Sunday that Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, had given the green light for the assassination.
The paper, citing "sources with knowledge of Mossad", said Netanyahu visited the Israeli intelligence headquarters in early January and, after being briefed, authorized the killing of al-Mabhuh.
A rehearsal of the operation, which reportedly involved at least 18 agents, was apparently carried out at a Tel Aviv hotel - without detection - prior to the briefing, The Times reported.
River to Sea
Uprooted Palestinian
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