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21/02/2010 The British Sunday Times said in a report over the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized the operation after being briefed on it during a visit to the Mossad headquarters "in the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv" in early January. “He was received by intelligence chief Meir Dagan and taken by him to a debriefing room where a number of the team members involved in Mahbouh's assassination were located,” the report said.
It added that the Mossad suspended its activity in the Middle East following the exposure of the agents involved in Mabhouh's assassination. An Israeli source told the paper that while the Mossad was aware of the many security cameras placed throughout the emirate, its agents were surprised by the Dubai police's ability to gather all the photographs in such an efficient manner.
The Mossad received information on Mabhouh's plans to travel to Dubai, and began working on a plan to have him assassinated in his hotel. The hit squad had already begun training on the mission in a Tel Aviv hotel room – without informing its owners.
The Mossad did not consider the operation particularly risky or complicated, and the prime minister reportedly authorized it and told the Mossad agents: "The people of Israel count on you. Good luck."
Several days later, on January 19, Mabhouh boarded a plane from Damascus to Dubai. Israel believed that from there he would take off to Iran in order to organize a weapons shipment to the Gaza Strip.
The Mossad had been preparing for the assassination for many months, and the members of the hit squad had already arrived in Dubai from Paris, Frankfurt, Rome and Zurich, using their fake passports. They also obtained credit cards with their stolen identities. A Mossad agent monitoring Mabhouh's flight informed the agents in Dubai, apparently via an Austrian mobile phone, that he was on his way to the emirate. Hours later, the Hamas commander was murdered in his hotel room.
A Dubai police commander said on Saturday that some of the passports used by the team had already been stamped in Dubai. Some three months ago, Mossad agents followed Mabhouh to Dubai and from there to China, and two months prior also tracked him on another visit to the emirate.
On January 19, after landing in Dubai and collecting his luggage, Mabhouh took a taxi to the al-Bustan Rotana Hotel. A European-looking woman in her early thirties was waiting outside the terminal. When she saw him enter the cab, she sent a text message to the head of the hit squad.
The team was divided into three groups: One group tracked Mabhouh, another was responsible for watching over the agents themselves, and the third group was in charge of the actual hit. Some of the agents changed their disguises as they moved through the city by changing their clothes and wigs.
When Mabhouh arrived at the hotel's reception desk, at least one Mossad agent was standing behind it to learn the number of the Hamas commander's hotel room. Two other agents, who were dressed as tennis players, followed him in the elevator to verify which room he was staying in. The opposite room was reserved by the agents.
Mabhouh left his hotel room in the early evening, and the Mossad agents continued to follow him. Hamas refuses to say who the commander met with when he left the Hotel, and Dubai police have not published photographs documenting what happened after that point, but the Times outlined two possible scenarios.
According to the first scenario, while Mabhouh was leaving the hotel, the hit squad entered his room to wait for him. The paper said the team either obtained a key or broke the lock, but that it was clear that someone had tried to reprogram the room's electronic lock.
The other possible scenario is that the team was not able to enter the room. In the case, it is estimated that one of the groups lured Mabhouh into open the door after he returned to his room. This may have been carried out by a woman wearing a black wig posing as a hotel employee.
According to the Times, it remains unclear what caused Mabhouh's death. The Dubai police claim he was strangled to death, but other sources say he was injected with poison. His death initially appeared to be of natural causes. As they left the rooms, the assassins hug a "Do not disturb" sign on the door, and within a few hours left the emirate to different locations, including Paris, Hong Kong, and South Africa.
Many hours passed before anyone suspected foul play. The next day, Mabhouh's wife contacted Hamas elements and said she was unable to reach her husband on his mobile phone. The hotel staff entered Mabhouh's room and found no signs of violence or a struggle, and Mabhouh appeared to be sleeping.
After the hotel staff was unable to wake Mabhouh, a doctor was called from a nearby hospital. Medication for the treatment of high blood pressure was found in his room, which Israeli sources have claimed was planted by the agents. The doctor determined that Mabhouh had died of natural causes, possibly a heart attack.
But Hamas elements, who had not forgotten the attempt on Khaled Mashaal's life 13 years ago, using poison, suspected that Mabhouh was poisoned to death. However, the results of Mabhouh's autopsy were inconclusive. On Saturday a source said that burn marks caused by use of a stun gun and sings of nasal bleeding were found on Mabhouh's body, which could be the result of strangulation. Nonetheless, there is no clear evidence to attest to the cause of death.
The Dubai police opened an investigation, security footage was gathered and the picture quickly became clear. An Israeli source admitted that "the action teams were well aware of the security cameras in Dubai, but they were shocked with the Dubai police's ability to collect all the images."
Meanwhile, Haaretz has learned that German officials are examining the identity of Michael Bodenheimer, the name that appeared on a genuine German passport allegedly used in Mabhouh's. The authorities in the city of Cologne, where the passport was issued, began a probe, and federal authorities are now considering a move of their own.
According to German weekly Der Spiegel, Bodenheimer, an Israeli, applied for a German passport from the Cologne authorities. Bodenheimer presented documents that proved German lineage, including his grandparents' marriage certificate. He also showed his Israeli passport that was issued to him a year earlier in Tel Aviv.
The German passport was issued on June 18, 2009. That document was used by one of the assassination suspects in Dubai on January 19, a day before the killing.
According to Der Spiegel, Bodenheimer does not live in Cologne, as he had claimed in his application, and no other person by that name lives there. The magazine claims a man by that name lived in Herzliya until June last year.
Haaretz has learned that a Michael Bodenheimer lives in Bnei Brak. His wife told Haaretz in a telephone interview that "he has no German passport and he never asked for such a passport. He never visited Germany, except perhaps in transit on the way to the United States."
His wife added that the ultra-Orthodox family does not have any family in Herzliya and that even though Bodenheimer's grandparents were born in Germany, they emigrated to the United States, from where he immigrated to Israel 30 years ago.
"We are quiet people and are not used to so much attention," she told Haaretz on Saturday. "The past week since the news of this story broke has been difficult for us. The fact that someone is using his name does not make him involved in this story."
Bodenheimer studies at a kollel, a yeshiva for married men. He has said he was astounded to see his name on the list of suspects, supposedly belonging to a German citizen.
"At first we didn't understand what everyone was talking about," Bodenheimer's daughter said. "The picture that was published doesn't look like him at all. He is always busy with Torah study," she said, adding that he holds no citizenship other than Israeli and American.
German media have reported that the intelligence services of the country are certain that the Mossad was involved in the killing and that the foreign minister demanded that Israel explain why it used a German passport.
Israel's ambassador to Berlin, Yoram Ben-Ze'ev, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, where he was asked about information that can shed light on the killing of Mabhouh.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Saturday that he does not expect relations between Israel and European countries whose passports were used in the assassination to deteriorate as a result of the incident.
"I do not expect a crisis in relations because there is nothing linking Israel to the assassination. Britain, France and Germany are countries with shared interests with Israel in countering terrorism," Ayalon said, naming three of the four countries whose passports were used. At least three of the suspects used Irish passports.
Meanwhile, Hamas official Salah al-Bardawil, said he does not suspect that the Palestinian Authority was involved in the killing and that the entire affair was the responsibility of Mossad.
However, the Hamas official said that the two Palestinians arrested in Dubai in connection with the killing were former officers in the Palestinian security services and were employed in a firm owned by a senior member of rival Fatah.
The London-based newspaper Al-Hayat reported that this company is owned by PA’s strongman Mohammed Dahlan.
Dubai Killers Used Diplomatic Passports: Police
21/02/2010 The hit squad which killed a senior Hamas official in Dubai last month made use of diplomatic passports, the Gulf emirate's police chief said in a newspaper on Sunday.
"There is information that Dubai police will not make public for the moment, especially regarding diplomatic passports" used by some of Mahmud al-Mabhuh's killers to enter Dubai, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan told Al-Bayan.
Mabhuh, a founder of the armed wing of the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas, was assassinated by a Mossad team of in his hotel room in Dubai on January 20. Khalfan has said he is "99, if not 100 percent" sure that Israel's spy agency Mossad was behind the assassination, and added on Saturday that Dubai had evidence, including wiretaps, of Mossad involvement.
Khalfan did not provide further details on the diplomatic passports.
Last week, Khalfan released the names and photos of 11 suspects with European passports -- six from Britain, three from Ireland, one from Germany and one from France -- in the killing.
The use of European passports has sparked a diplomatic furor in which Israeli envoys in the four countries have been summoned for talks.
Mabhuh's killing "is no longer a local issue, but a security issue for European countries," Khalfan said on Sunday, quoted in the Abu Dhabi newspaper Al-Ittihad.
Al-Ittihad said Khalfan has called for Hamas to conduct an internal investigation "about the person who leaked information on Mabhuh's movements" and arrival in Dubai to his killers.
The source of the leak is the "real killer," Khalfan said.
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