Hanan Awarekeh
18/02/2010 At a time Dubai insists that the European passports used by the killers of a top Hamas leader in a hotel room of the Gulf emirate were not fakes, Israeli-European ties seem to be in trouble as UK, Ireland and France asked Israel to give clarifications over this issue calling for full Israeli cooperation in the probe.
The National newspaper reported on Thursday that Dubai police chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan said he was 99 percent sure Israel's Mossad intelligence service was behind the murder of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. "Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of Mabhouh.
It is 99 percent, if not 100 percent that Mossad is standing behind the murder," the Abu Dhabi-based English-language daily quoted Khalfan as saying.
Al-Bayan newspaper also reported that Dubai police insist the European passports were not fakes. "Dubai police has more evidence, apart from the tapes and photos that were revealed earlier," Khalfan said, quoted in Al-Bayan. "The coming days will carry more surprises which will leave no room for doubt."
He insisted the European passports used by the team which allegedly killed Mahmud al-Mabhouh last month were not fakes and that Dubai immigration officers were "trained" by European security experts to spot such documents.
"This training qualifies immigration officers to spot fake passports. They applied these procedures at Dubai airport when the alleged (killers) entered the country," he said. "No forgery was found in those passports."
With Dubai police's disclosure of the names and photos of the alleged hit team, fingers have been pointed at Israel's spy agency Mossad and its agents accused of using fake passports of European citizens. Six British passport holders, three Irish, including a woman, a German and a man with a French passport made up the alleged hit team.
Britain, Ireland and France pressed the Zionist entity over the killing blamed on its spy agency, as diplomatic tension mounted with Israel's ambassadors called in for talks in London and Dublin.
"We hope and expect that they will cooperate fully with the investigation," said British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, referring to a probe launched with Dubai authorities.
"We want to get to the bottom of the issue of the fraudulent passports, or their potential use," Miliband added, after Israeli envoy Ron Prosor held talks with Peter Ricketts, the head of Britain's diplomatic service.
Miliband added that he hopes to meet Israeli FM Avigdor Lieberman on Monday in Brussels, where a meeting of European Union foreign ministers is scheduled. "I look forward to discussing this further with him then," he said.
Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin also announced "frank" talks with Israel's envoy - diplomatic code for potentially angry exchanges - saying he regarded the use of false Irish passports as "an extremely serious incident". "We are putting pretty direct questions and seeking assistance and clarification. We want to get answers as quickly as we possibly can," he said.
"You can decode what I am saying. It is a very serious situation," Martin added, shortly before the talks between Israeli ambassador Zion Evrony and the top civil servant in Ireland's foreign ministry.
In France, a foreign ministry spokesman said Paris is "demanding explanations" from the Israeli embassy for the use of a false French passport.
The use of fake passports of countries with normally friendly ties with Israel is generating anger in at least three of the European capitals concerned. All except Germany have insisted the passports were faked.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown - whose country's ties with Israel were already chilled by a recent row over an arrest warrant issued for ex foreign minister Tzipi Livni - stressed Thursday the need for a "full investigation." "We have got to know the facts, we have got to know what has happened, we have got to know what happened to British passports," he said.
Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency will lead the probe in cooperation with the United Arab Emirates authorities, a government spokesman said.
In Austria meanwhile, authorities said they were investigating whether the killers used Austrian phone numbers or SIM cards to plan their hit. "The investigations are underway and we're in contact with Dubai police," interior ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia told AFP.
British daily The Times quotes a former Mossad agent as saying that since Meir Dagan's appointment t as head of the spy agency in 2002, maintaining good relations with other nations was dropped to the bottom of the list. “Mossad is facing a lot of anger right now over the use of British and European passports. I don’t know if Mossad was actually involved or how they got those passports though I can say that Dagan isn’t the kind of man to care about angering a few people to get the job done,” the former agent told The Times.
An editorial published The Independent columnist Robert Fisk pointed an accusatory finger at Britain itself, claiming that Dubai suspects "Europe's 'security collaboration' with Israel has crossed a line into illegality, where British passports (and those of other EU nations) can now be used to send Israeli agents into the Gulf to kill Israel's enemies."
Fisk quoted an "impeccable" source in the Arab emirate as saying that "the British passports are real. They are hologram pictures with the biometric stamp. They are not forged or fake. The names were really there. If you can fake a hologram or biometric stamp, what does this mean?"
The alleged killers arrived in Dubai on January 19, a day after Mabhouh, 50, who lives in Damascus, arrived in the emirate. They left the United Arab Emirates on January 20, the day the Hamas leading member was found dead.
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