UPDATE. Moordaanslag in Dubai. Analyse Ramsey Bahroud. 43 artikelen + VIDEO's
Reageer (4)Sunday's Zaman
Alternative reading of the al-Mabhouh murder
By Ramzy Bahroud
6-9-2010
The killing of Palestinian activist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on Jan. 19 was clearly a well-planned, violent and sadistic act, committed by Israeli assassins in the supposed safety of a sovereign country.
Yes, al-Mabhouh was a Palestinian activist. We have no reason to believe otherwise. He spent years of his life in Israeli prison -- and one year in an Egyptian jail -- for his political activism. This, however, gives no credibility to Israel’s accusation that al-Mabhouh was a killer of Israelis. This assertion becomes even more problematic when we consider that al-Mabhouh’s assassination was, according to British media, ordered by accused Israeli war criminals and rightwing politicians.
According to the Sunday Times, Meir Dagan, the current director of Mossad, briefed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the assassination plan during a meeting in early January. “The people of Israel trust you. Good luck,” Netanyahu reportedly said at the end of this meeting.
It is disgraceful enough that the assassins used “fraudulent” European passports, as well as credit cards linked to an American bank to carry out their plans. But more upsetting is the fact that this cruel and calculated action has inspired little more than expressions of “outrage.” Have we become this resigned to Israeli impunity?
What about the sanctity of life, the sovereignty of nations and the respect for international law? Are these immediately disposable when the victim is Palestinian and the location of the crime an Arab country?
Al-Mabhouh has also been callously deprived of his own relevance to the story. We don’t really know much about the man aside from what Israel wants us to know -- a senior Hamas operative who was responsible for the abduction and killings of two Israeli soldiers; one of the founders of the militant arm of Hamas, Izz al-Din al-Qassam; the middleman between Hamas in Gaza and the al-Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran.
Who has woven this fascinatingly reductionist account of al-Mabhouh’s life in such a short span of time? His family? Hamas? The Palestinian media? No, none of these. The creator of this biography is Israel, the very country that assassinated him. Now that is truly outrageous: The murderer writes and convinces the world of the story of the murder victim. And the media gladly runs with it.
A Palestinian would tell al-Mabhouh’s story in entirely different terms. He was born in Jabalia, one of Gaza’s poorest and most crowded refugee camps. These key words alone -- Gaza, poor, crowded, refugee -- help to unravel the real story of al-Mabhouh. It is the story shared by so many people who still live a life of utter anguish, poverty and resistance in the Gaza Strip -- and elsewhere -- which is under inhumane siege and successive wars by the world’s fourth strongest army. The story is not about abducted occupation soldiers, but about millions of refugees, not about Iran, but about Gaza and Palestine, not about luxury hotels, but about horrifyingly desolate refugee camps.
But Palestinians -- like many oppressed peoples around the world -- have no right to their own narrative. Their story is negligible, if not wholly irrelevant. Israel commits the murder, Israel offers the explanation and eventually Israel gets away with both the crime and the lie. Al-Mabhouh’s murder might eventually inspire several documentaries that highlight the murderous nature of Palestinian militants and the unequalled brilliance of Israeli retaliation. Another Steven Spielberg’s “Munich” might already be in the making. The first scene of this would not be al-Mabhouh’s family forced to flee their village in Palestinian after untold butchery by Zionist militants in 1948. Instead it might show a dark-skinned, menacing Palestinian slaughtering two helpless Israeli soldiers pleading for their lives.
We are, more or less, told to forget about al-Mabhouh. After all, his name is used along with Hamas and Iran in the same sentence. That should be enough to tell us that his life is dispensable -- just like the lives of the over 1,400 Palestinians who were killed by the Israeli army in Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. Israel may well be preparing for yet another attack on the impoverished strip. The tunnels that represent the lifeline for the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are routinely blown up by Israeli warplanes, detonated by dynamite and blocked by an Egyptian steel wall. Gazans cannot be allowed any weapons to defend themselves either. The “international community” has held many meetings to ensure that no weapons find their way to Gaza. The US in particular is utterly firm regarding this issue -- although not at all firm about ensuring that food or medicine reach the strip. Al-Mabhouh may have been killed due to Israel’s belief he was arming the resistance. This partly explains why the “international community” is not at all moved by the murder. Al-Mabhouh might have been involved in breaking the Western consensus on denying Gaza both food and arms.
The European Union is only worried about its link to the story, and not the murder itself. An EU statement issued in Brussels on Feb. 22 condemned the “fact that those involved in this action used fraudulent EU member-states passports.” They didn’t name Israel though. As the Financial Times noted, “Criticism of Israel was as strongly worded as the EU could manage, given that Germany, Italy and several other countries place great emphasis on close relations with Israel.”
One can only imagine what would happen if Hamas decides to strike back, expanding the battleground from Gaza to the rest of the world. Would the EU express disapproval of Hamas’ use of fraudulent passports, but then refrain from actually naming the group -- due to the fear, say, of upsetting Muslim countries?
No. But when the victim is a Palestinian and the murderers are Israelis -- 27 of them so far -- it’s an entirely different story and an entirely different concept of justice.
*Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story”
Source
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Abu Pessoptimist
"UK spreekt met Israël over paspoorten."
Brodsky tijdens zijn verschijnen voor de rechter in Warschau.
14-8-2010
Een kolossale anticlimax, ongetwijfeld met de bedoeling Israël een gênant proces wegens spionage te besparen. Dat moet de conclusie zijn van de wonderlijke vertoning waarbij een rechter in Keulen de in Polen opgepakte Mossad-spion Uri Brodsky vrijdag op borgtocht heeft laten gaan.
Brodsky was op 4 juni aangehouden op de Frederic Chopin luchthaven van Warschau naar aanleiding van een Europees arrestatiebevel dat was uitgevaardigd door Duitsland. Hij werd verdacht van spionage en het vervalsen van en Duits paspoort. Brodsky zou met een paspoort op naam van Michael Bodenheimer (zie kleine foto) hebben deelgenomen aan de moord op Hamas-kopstuk Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai in januari.
Een uiterst curieuze uitspraak, die waarschijnlijk alleen maar aangeeft dat de Duitse regering er geen in in had Israël voor het hoofd te stoten wegens een opzienbarende rechtszaak betreffende de moord op Mabhouh in de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten. Ook wat het gedrag van de VAE betreft zijn er vraagtekens. Dit land had namelijk ook kunnen vragen om Brodsky's uitlevering, maar liet weten daarvan af te zien. Waarom? Wegens de goede betrekkingen met Washington? Het blijft speculeren maar bevredigend voor het rechtsgevoel is het niet, dat een spionagedienst zo makkelijk wegkomt met een moord die allerwegen ontzettend de aandacht heeft getrokken.
Bron
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Ha'aretz
Suspected Mossad agent loses extradition fight over Dubai hit
Poland to extradite Uri Brodsky to Germany within 10 days to face charge of forging passport used in assassination of Hamas leader.
5-8-2010
A Warsaw appeals court upheld Thursday the extradition of alleged Mossad agent Uri Brodsky to Germany, where he is suspected of helping attackers in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai.
The appeals court upheld last month's ruling that Brodsky, an Israeli citizen, should be extradited to Germany on forgery charges but not for espionage. The district court last month said spying against Germany is not a punishable crime in Poland.
The ruling means Brodsky can be tried in Germany for forgery but not for espionage.
Germany applied for the suspect's extradition after he was arrested on June 4 in Warsaw's airport on a European arrest warrant charging him with espionage and helping to falsely obtain a German passport, which was allegedly used in connection with the Jan. 19 slaying of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a hotel in Dubai.
Brodsky is suspected in Germany of acting as an agent for a foreign intelligence service and helping to forge a German passport used by one of the attackers in the Mabhouh assassination.
Brodsky walked into the courtroom in Warsaw hiding his face in his hands with a hood pulled over his head.
Prosecutors have said they were not taking politics into consideration but were acting in accordance with procedures.
Brodsky's lawyer, Krzysztof Stepinski, has said he appealed the earlier court decision because extradition is not allowed under Polish law when the alleged offenses have a political motive.
Warsaw prosecutors also appealed, saying they wanted the court to consider extradition on all the charges brought against Brodsky.
Israel has spoken out against the extradition, saying the suspect should be dealt with by the Israeli justice system.
Israel's request that Poland not extradite Brodsky put Warsaw in the delicate position of choosing between two close allies, Germany and Israel.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said he hoped the matter would not harm Polish-Israeli relations, but added that European law left the court with little choice but to extradite Brodsky.
Along with other Western countries, Germany was angry that its passports were used by members of a suspected Mossad hit team that is believed to have murdered Mabhouh, a co-founder of Hamas' military wing
Police in the United Arab Emirates said the elaborate hit squad linked to the assassination of Mabhouh involved some 25 suspects, most of them carrying fake passports from European nations and Australia.
Source
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Asia Times
Alternative reading of Hamas murder
by Carlos Latuff
By RAMZY BAROUD
10-3-2010
The killing of Palestinian activist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh on January 19 was clearly a well-planned act, committed by Israeli assassins in the supposed safety of a sovereign country, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Yes, Mabhouh was a Palestinian activist. We have no reason to believe otherwise. He spent years of his life in Israeli prisons – and one year in an Egyptian jail – for his political activism. This, however, gives no credibility to Israel’s accusation that Mabhouh was a killer of Israelis. This assertion becomes even more problematic when considering that Mabhouh’s assassination was, according to British media, ordered by Israeli rightwing politicians.
According to the Sunday Times, Meir Dagan, the current director of Mossad, briefed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the assassination plan during a meeting in early January. “The people of Israel trust you. Good luck,” Netanyahu reportedly said at the end of this meeting.
It is disgraceful enough that the assassins used fraudulent European passports, as well as credit cards linked to an American bank to carry out their plans. But more upsetting is the fact that this calculated action has inspired little more than expressions of “outrage”. Have we become this resigned to Israeli impunity?
What about the sanctity of life, the sovereignty of nations and the respect for international law? Are these immediately disposable when the victim is Palestinian and the location of the crime an Arab country?
Mabhouh has also been callously deprived of his own relevance to the story. We don’t really know much about the man aside from what Israel wants us to know – a senior Hamas operative who was responsible for the abduction and killings of two Israeli soldiers; one of the founders of the militant arm of Hamas, Izz al-Din al-Qassam; the middleman between Hamas in Gaza and the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Who has woven this fascinatingly reductionist account of Mabhouh’s life in such a short span of time? His family? Hamas? The Palestinian media? No, none of these. The creator of this biography is Israel, the very country that assassinated him. Now that is truly outrageous: the murderer writes and convinces the world of the story of the murder victim. And the media gladly run with it.
Expectedly, a Palestinian would tell Mabhouh’s story in entirely different terms. He was born in Jabalia, one of Gaza’s poorest and most crowded refugee camps. These key words alone – Gaza, poor, crowded, refugee – helps to unravel the real story of Mabhouh. It is the story shared by so many people who still live a life of utter anguish, poverty and resistance in the Gaza Strip – and elsewhere – which is under inhumane siege and successive wars by the world’s fourth-strongest army. The story is not about abducted occupation soldiers, but about millions of refugees, not about Iran, but about Gaza and Palestine, not about luxury hotels, but about horrifyingly desolate refugee camps.
But Palestinians – like many oppressed peoples around the world – have no right to their own narrative. Their story is negligible, if not wholly irrelevant. Israel commits the murder, Israel offers the explanation, and eventually Israel gets away with both the crime and the lie. Mabhouh’s murder might eventually inspire several documentaries that highlight the murderous nature of Palestinian militants and the unequalled brilliance of Israeli retaliation. Another tale like Steven Spielberg’s Munich might already be in the making. The first scene of this would not be that Mabhouh’s family was forced to flee their Palestinian village after untold butchery by Zionist militants in 1948. Instead it might show a dark-skinned, menacing Palestinian slaughtering two helpless Israeli soldiers pleading for their lives.
We are, more or less, told to forget about Mabhouh. After all, his name is used along with Hamas and Iran in the same sentence. That should be enough to tell us that his life is dispensable – just like the lives of over 1,400 Palestinians who were killed by the Israeli army in Gaza between December 2008 and January 2009. Israel may well be preparing for yet another attack on the impoverished Strip.
The tunnels that represent the lifeline for the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are being routinely blown up by Israeli warplanes, detonated by dynamites and blocked by an Egyptian steel wall. Gazans cannot be allowed any weapons to defend themselves either. The “international community” has held many meetings to ensure that no weapons find their way to Gaza. The US in particular is utterly firm regarding this issue – although not at all firm about ensuring that food or medicine reach the Strip.
Mabhouh may have been killed due to Israel’s belief he was arming the resistance. This partly explains why the “international community” is not at all moved by the murder. Mabhouh might have been involved in breaking the Western consensus on denying Gaza both food and arms.
The European Union is only worried about its link to the story, and not the murder itself. An EU statement issued in Brussels on February 22 condemned the “fact that those involved in this action used fraudulent EU member-states passports”. They didn’t name Israel though. As the Financial Times resolved, “Criticism of Israel was as strongly worded as the EU could manage, given that Germany, Italy and several other countries place great emphasis on close relations with Israel.”
One can only imagine what would happen if Hamas decided to strike back, expanding the battleground from Gaza to the rest of the world. Would the EU express disapproval of Hamas’ use of fraudulent passports, but then refrain from actually naming the group – due to a fear, say, of upsetting Muslim countries?
No. But when the victim is a Palestinian and the killers are Israelis – 27 of them so far – it’s an entirely different story, and an entirely different concept of justice.
Source
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Los Angeles Times
How Dubai unraveled a homicide, frame by frame
A mix of old-fashioned legwork and high-tech razzle-dazzle, scouring hundreds of hours of surveillance videos, helped police home in on suspects in a Hamas man's slaying, blamed on Israel's Mossad.
By Borzou Daragahi
14-3-2010
Reporting from Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Lacking witnesses but blessed with hundreds of hours of video, the cops and spooks worked the case of the slain weapons smuggler like a movie in reverse.
Dubai's cameras never blink. The security system allows law enforcement to track anyone, from the moment they get off an airplane, to the immigration counter where their passport is scanned, through the baggage claim area to the taxi stand where cameras record who gets into what cars, which log their locations through the city's automated highway toll system, all the way to their hotels, which also have cameras.
Which brings us to the Bustan Rotana hotel on the night of Jan. 19, and an assassination made to look like a run-of-the-mill heart attack.
The dead man, as the world now knows, was a 50-year-old Hamas commander named Mahmoud Mabhouh, wanted by Israel in the killing of two Israeli soldiers. Once Dubai investigators narrowed the time of death to 8 to 8:30 p.m., they quickly found that seven people in the Bustan Rotana had no business being there.
Using facial recognition software, a source familiar with the investigation said, a team of 20 investigators pored over hours of security camera videos to sketch out a picture of the suspects' movements and accomplices, a group that has grown to at least 27 people.
They tracked down taxi drivers and grilled them about the suspects. They even traced the trip of a female suspect to a shopping center and discovered what she bought.
For years, the United Arab Emirates has been using its considerable oil wealth to build up its defense and security infrastructure, including the National Security Agency, the secret police, which is playing a key role in the investigation.
"They buy the best," said Kamal Awar, a retired Lebanese army officer and editor of Beirut-based Defense 21, a regional military magazine. "They bought the latest technology in satellite and communications."
In the end, a mixture of high-tech razzle-dazzle and old-fashioned investigative work cracked the case.
"What it takes is a few skilled police officers putting stuff on the board and figuring out who relates to what," said Col. Patrick Lang, a former U.S. military intelligence officer who served in the Persian Gulf for years. "It's not a magic thing. It's a question of thinking clearly."
A homicide in disguise
The middle-aged man was splayed out dead in his hotel room as if he'd gone into cardiac arrest. The door was chained from the inside. Coroners surmised that he'd died of natural causes.
But one doctor noticed an abnormality in the blood. He later spotted strange puncture marks on a leg and behind an ear. And after the Palestinian militant group Hamas informed Dubai authorities that the dead man was Mahmoud Mabhouh, they decided it couldn't hurt to double-check. Blood samples were sent abroad. Days passed.
When the toxicology reports showed that he'd been given a lethal dose of a powerful anesthetic, Dubai authorities knew they had a high-profile homicide on their hands. Though Mabhouh was no friend of the Emirates, authorities were furious about the killing.
"The whole operation was based on one key assumption: that the death will be recorded as a natural death," Mustafa Alani, an analyst at the Gulf Research Center, a Dubai think tank, said of the assassins. "And that was the downfall. The reason why they were so careless was because they thought there would be no investigation."
At least half of the passports used by the 27 suspects bore the names and registration numbers of Israeli dual citizens who held British, Irish, Australian, French or German passports, leading many experts to believe that Israel's spy outfit, Mossad, had forged the identities.
Israeli officials have been tight-lipped about the case and refused to confirm or deny the nation's involvement. None of the suspects captured on video or identified in passport photos, including a bottle-blond and an assortment of beefy, balding guys wearing rectangular glasses, have come forward to deny or confirm their involvement.
Interpol announced last week that it was joining the international investigation.
"Investigative information provided by the authorities in Dubai bore out the international links and broad scope of the number of people involved, as well as the role of two 'teams' of individuals identified by the Dubai police as being linked to al-Mabhouh's murder," Interpol said in a statement.
An unlikely place to strike
Perhaps no hotel in Dubai is less amenable to an assassination than the upscale Bustan Rotana, in the Garhoud district adjacent to the airport. The circular building's rooms are arrayed around a vast airy atrium.
"If you're sitting in the lobby you can see the door to every room," said Theodore Karasik, a security analyst at the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Affairs, a think tank with offices in Dubai and Beirut. "If there's a scuffle, you can see and hear it."
Security experts around the world have also puzzled over the apparent size of the hit team: 27 bearers of Western passports and, according to Hamas, two or three Palestinians.
Some security experts said the assassins knew what they were doing, organizing themselves into evacuation, surveillance and execution teams.
But others see a classic bureaucratic blunder.
"You have a surveillance team and a counter-surveillance team and the technical people as well as the security people around the perimeter," said Lang, the former U.S. military intelligence officer. "Once you start doing that, you have to have shifts. You have to have two or three sets of these people and rotate them. Once you start doing it that way you're going to have a lot of people."
The assailants apparently entered the hotel room without any struggle, suggesting that someone on the team knew Mabhouh. A fatal dose of the powerful muscle relaxant succinylcholine quickly paralyzes its recipient and ultimately mimics the effects of a heart attack. It should have killed Mabhouh within 15 minutes.
But something must have gone wrong, said the source with knowledge of the investigation, because the assassins pressed a pillow against Mabhouh's face for one or two minutes until he suffocated. "They were panicking for one reason or another," said the source.
The hit team tidied up the room and laid Mabhouh out as though he'd suffered a massive heart attack and dropped dead.
Dubai Police Chief. Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim told satellite channel Al Arabiya that "the murderers tried their best to mislead us."
A knack for putting things together
Just as police were about to conclude that it was a natural death, a Palestinian man trying to contact Mabhouh learned of his death and telephoned his family in Gaza. It was only then that Hamas officials contacted Dubai police, Tamim said.
"Dubai police are very good at piecing together crimes," analyst Karasik said. "I've seen it before when you had robberies or murders occur and you'll forget about the story and then six months later the guys are arrested via Interpol, brought back here and then they disappear into the system."
Although Mabhouh's assassins managed to enter the country, kill him and get out without getting caught, the case has generated what most analysts consider unwelcome fallout for Israel, which most suspect of being behind the attack.
Authorities are now reexamining the death of Faisal Husseini, a charismatic Palestinian leader who died in his Kuwait hotel room in 2001.
"Now we know their tradecraft," said Alani. "We know how they operate."
If Mossad agents were behind the attack, the operation blew the identities of 27 agents; it takes up to five years to train each agent.
"They'll never be able to go outside of Israel again, even with disguises," Karasik said. "Biometrics means all of the contours of your face are on file."
daragahi@latimes.com
Source
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TIME
Israel: Did the Alleged Mossad Hit in Dubai Really Help?
By Robert Baer
9-3-2010
As more details emerge about the Jan. 19 assassination of a senior Hamas operative in Dubai, it looks increasingly like a badly botched operation.
When the Dubai police first announced that the hotel room of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh had been locked from the inside, I had dismissed that as an unimportant detail - maybe a way to delay the discovery of his body. But it turns out that the assassins had, in fact, wanted the Dubai police to believe that Mabhouh had died of natural causes, a heart attack. It certainly looked that way at first. Mabhouh was found in bed, undressed, and his pants were folded on a chair. That impression, though, was upended when the autopsy showed traces of a paralyzing agent in his bloodstream. From what's been pieced together so far, it seems that Mabhouh was incapacitated and then smothered. (Read "Israel Faces Growing Fallout Over a Hamas Hit.")
No one with any sense doubts it was Israel's Mossad that assassinated Mabhouh. While Israel has not admitted it, it has also not denied it. The killing was publicly applauded by Tzipi Livni, leader of Israel's opposition and herself a former Mossad agent. And it had all of the hallmarks of a Mossad operation - motivation (Mabhouh was buying Iranian arms for Gaza), the large number of people believed to be on the assassination team (26 at the latest count) and a network that spans Europe and the U.S. (where two of the alleged assassins traveled to from Dubai).
If Mossad was indeed responsible, it means that blame for Mabhouh's assassination can be put at the doorstep of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel's Prime Minister has historically approved hits staged in countries with which Israel is not at war. Such details are unlikely to be made public any time soon, but it does make you wonder what the deliberations might have been leading up to Mabhouh's assassination. (See pictures of life under Hamas in Gaza.)
More than a few Middle East hands shrugged their shoulders at the question: Netanyahu wouldn't have cared whether Israel was fingered for the assassination of Mabhouh or not. The whole point, they argue, was to send a reminder to Israel's enemies that it will eliminate them anywhere it can find them. When Mossad went after the Palestinian Black September movement in retaliation for the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, it didn't give a damn about the diplomatic blowback. It was a case of an eye for an eye, and the belief that the best deterrence is to strike fear into your enemies
But the evidence that the assassins tried to make it look as if Mabhouh died in his sleep belies the deterrence explanation. And it doesn't answer the question why Mossad would risk exposing 26 operatives. A small intelligence service, Mossad cannot afford to take this many people out of circulation by having their pictures beamed around the world. It also doesn't explain why the alleged assassins stole the identities of Israeli citizens. Israelis may be proud that their secret service can reach its enemies anywhere, but it serves no national or political interests to expose their own people to retribution. (See the top 10 assassination plots.)
If Netanyahu authorized the hit, though, the real question is whether he really considered the strategic implications. Look at the map. If Israel goes ahead and bombs Iran's nuclear facilities, it will need over-flight clearances from the Gulf Arabs. Antagonizing the U.A.E. in this way, leaving almost no doubt Israel was behind Mabhouh's assassination, does not seem the best way to facilitate such clearances. Nor does it help build an Arab Sunni coalition against Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hizballah.
Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Tel Aviv this week to try to convince the Israelis that they should allow more time for new sanctions on Iran to work before taking any decision on bombing Iran. But the uncomfortable truth that must have hung in the air when Biden and Netanyahu met is that Iran's economic Achilles heel is refined gasoline. The Islamic Republic imports about a third of its needs. And, unfortunately, 75% of Iran's gasoline imports pass through the U.A.E. I would bet that, right now, Netanyahu is wishing that Mossad had been just a little better at covering its tracks.
- Baer, a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, is TIME.com's intelligence columnist and the author of See No Evil and, most recently, The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower.
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YNet
Interpol: All Dubai assassins wanted
8-3-2010
International Criminal Police Organization announces 27 people now wanted for alleged involvement in Hamas figure's killing. Interpol secretary-general says Dubai police's thorough probe has established clear link between passport records, security footage, DNA
The International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) announced Monday that it has issued 16 additional Red Notices to assist in the arrest of additional suspects linked to the murder of senior Hamas figure Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, bringing the total to 27.
The organization stressed that it had not issued international arrest warrants.
Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble said that a thorough investigation by the Dubai police established a clear link between the passport records and the security footage, as well as DNA, evidence from eyewitnesses, credit card records and phone calls.
According to a statement on the Interpol website, the decision was made at the request of the United Arab Emirates authorities. The pictures of the 16 additional suspects were updated on the website, which details the offenses attributed to them.
The investigation into the Mabhouh assassination has yet to yield new findings, although the Dubai police insist that they have obtained DNA samples of the assassins. Police chief Dhahi Khalfan Tamim on Friday vowed to resign from his post if this claim proves to be false.
"I challenge Israel to bring the suspects there in order to undergo a DNA test and compare them with the samples we have," he said in an interview to the UAE-based al-Khaleej newspaper.
"If it turns out that the results do not match, I will resign. You can lie about anything, but not about DNA," he added.
Meanwhile, the joint international investigation into the affair continues. Australian investigators arrived in Israel last week in order to probe the use of Australian passports belonging to three Israelis during the Dubai operation. Several hours after landing in Israel, the investigators were said to have been involved in a hit-and-run accident in Tel Aviv.
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Kawter Salam
Rewards to Those Who Forge UK Passports
6-3-2010
Yesterday the British government discussed the possibility of amending some laws in order to help protect Israeli war criminals, whose government forged British passports and used them to carry out the murder of a civilian in another country, Dubai, which country has diplomatic relations with Britain.
The government is prepared to launch a proposal for amendments to the current law and pertaining to arrest of suspects in war crimes, in order to ensure that any Israeli official would not be subjected to arrest or detention during any of their visits to the United Kingdom. The ruling Labor Party members were notified that the amendments will be sent, today, to the “selected Justice Commission” and the government will start procedures to transform it into legislation after consultation with the Committee.
The discussion of the British government for amendments to their current law is a scandal and a disgraceful affront to the British justice system; especially as it comes some weeks after the Israeli (Mossad) death squad used fake British passports in the murder of Mohammad al-Mabhouh – a leader of Hamas in Dubai.
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Gulf News
How 'unwitting' were the British Israelis?
By Linda S. Heard
The dual nationals linked to Al Mabhouh's assassination aren't necessarily as innocent as people think they are
Reports in the international media widely assume that the 12 Britons named unwittingly handed over their British passports to Israeli airport immigration authorities. Nino Jose Heredia/Gulf News
2-3-2010
At last, a team of detectives from Britain's Serious Organised Crimes Agency is in Israel with the intent of interviewing British-Israeli dual nationals whose passports were cloned by Mahmoud Al Mabhouh's assassins.
Reports in the international media widely assume that the 12 Britons named unwittingly handed over their British passports to Israeli airport immigration authorities. The general belief is that the dual-nationals concerned are innocent victims of those behind the plot to kill the Hamas commander. They may well be. However, given certain anomalies, I can only trust that their "interviews" will be more than a softly-softly chat over tea and cucumber sandwiches.
Firstly, Philip Carr whose name appears on the second list of six British dual-nationals issued by Dubai Police has confirmed a point I mentioned in last week's column; that Israeli citizens must enter and depart Israel on their Israeli passports. "I don't think I ever presented the passport to anyone in Israel because I left and came back to Israel on my Israeli passport in accordance with Israeli law," Carr said. In that case, Carr would have certainly remembered being asked by Israeli immigration to hand over his British travel documents. Alternatively, Carr could be attempting to get Israeli immigration off the hook. Carr says the whole matter is "more interesting than annoying".
The main mystery is: how did an intelligence agency gain sight of Carr's passport along with all the others? If they had been stolen then that would have been reported. There is the possibility that they could have been intercepted by Israeli postal authorities or had been requested by Israeli government agencies for whatever purpose. These are questions that are, no doubt, being asked by British police.
Secondly, the British police should profile the dual-nationals and try to discover a pattern. What is it that they have in common, if anything?
Mysterious
About those named on the second list little is known. Most have either gone to ground or have refused newspaper interviews. An Israeli news site, Ynet, reports that one female Israeli resident named denies holding a foreign passport, while within hours of the new list's publication "the names of ‘suspects' Philip Carr and Daniel Marc Schnur ‘magically' disappeared from the 144 phone directory website".
There is, however, a smattering of information about the six whose names were initially revealed. At least three live and work on kibbutzim. These are:
Paul John Keeley, a convert to Judaism who has lived on Kibbutz Nahsholim for 15 years and says he hasn't left Israel since 2008 when he visited Turkey on a trip organised by his kibbutz.
Michael Lawrence Barney, who immigrated to Israel in the 1970s to work on the kibbutz of Beit HaEmek; he was followed by his brother during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. A kibbutz spokesperson has revealed that in the early days the kibbutz was home to people connected with security, who used to regularly disappear for a week or more. Today, young Beit HaEmek kibbutzniks voluntarily add a year to their mandatory national service. The name of Barney's daughter Gabriella, who lives on the same kibbutz, appears on the second list.
James Leonard Clarke moved to Israel several years ago when he worked for the Israeli military as a bomb disposal expert. He is now a resident of a kibbutz called Givat HaShlosha, that once hid weapons caches for the Haganah, a Jewish terrorist network which became the core of the Israeli army after 1948.
The others originally named are:
Stephen Daniel Hodes, who moved to Israel a decade ago followed by his parents. Today he works as a physiotherapist for the Hadassah Hospital in Occupied Jerusalem that was founded by the Women's Zionist Organisation of America.
Melvyn Adam Mildiner, who immigrated to Israel on September 11, 2001, and who says he feels more at home there than anywhere else.
Jonathan Lewis Graham, who immigrated to Israel with his parents and family three years ago; all said to be "devoutly religious and community-minded".
The message I'm getting is that all six are Zionist and/or religious ideologues. Moreover, a named Australian dual-national, Joshua Daniel Bruce, is in Israel to study Judaism while Michael Bodenheimer, whose name appears on a forged German passport, lives in the ultra-orthodox city of Bnei Brak and studies in a yeshiva (Jewish seminary). None of them, as far as I can divine, has lashed out at the Israeli government or at the Mossad for placing them in peril. ‘Coincidentally', none of the 12 Britons named was outside Israel at the time of the hit.
Most ordinary young Israelis, today, are not ideologues, so it may be that these people were specifically chosen for their patriotic fervour. It's not, therefore, inconceivable that they willingly handed over their passports to Mossad agents and agreed not to travel during a specified period. That's for British investigators to find out. I only hope that they are backed by enough political will to launch a vigorous probe befitting the seriousness of this crime.
Concurrently, the US should investigate Payoneer, the New-York based company that distributed credit cards to several of the assassins. Payoneer's founder and CEO Yuval Tal is a former member of Israel's Special Forces, while the company has a research and development centre in Tel Aviv. But don't hold your breath!
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com. Some of the comments may be considered for publication.
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YNet
By Roee Nahmias
Dubai police chief: I'll resign if DNA doesn't match
5-3-2010
Dhahi Khalfan Tamim challenges Israel to test DNA of suspected assassins of Hamas man Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, says: 'You can lie about anything, but not about DNA'
The investigation into the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh has yet to yield any new findings, but it seems the law enforcement authorities in Dubai, where the killing took place, are trying to keep the issue in the headlines at all costs.
Dubai Police Chief Dhahi Khalfan Tamim on Friday addressed reports that his men had obtained the DNA of part of the members of the hit squad and vowed to resign from his post if this claim proves to be false.
"I challenge Israel to bring the suspects there in order to undergo a DNA test and compare them with the samples we have," he said in an interview to the UAE-based al-Khaleej newspaper.
"If it turns out that the results do not match, I will resign. You can lie about anything, but not about DNA," he added.
Tamim recently challenged Mossad chief Meir Dagan to own up to the assassination. In Friday's interviewed he reiterated that he hopes "the Israeli official comes out and takes responsibility for the crime, instead of avoiding it in front of the media.
"If Mabhouh was a terrorist as they claim, then what can be said about the Israelis who carried out this crime on someone else's land?"
Meanwhile, in an interview with the al-Jazeera network, to be broadcast in full on Friday, Tamim said that if he chose to, he would be able to "infiltrate Dagan's office".
He also repeated accusations that one of Mabhouh's aides gave the assassins information on his whereabouts which enabled them to carry out the operation.
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Dissident Voice
Mossad Comes to America: Death Squads by Invitation
by James Petras
3-3-2010
The principle propaganda mouthpiece of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO), the Daily Alert (DA), has come out in full support for Israel’s practice of extra-judicial, extra-territorial assassination.
In the face of world-wide governmental condemnation (except from the Zionist-occupied White House and US Congress), the PMAJO slavishly backs any brutal murder committed by the Israeli secret police anywhere in the world and at anytime. The recent assassination of Hamas leader, Mahmoud Mabhouh, in Dubai is a case in point. The PMAJO has defended all of Mossad’s criminal actions leading up to the murder, including extensive identity theft and the stealing or falsification of passports and official documents from several European countries, presumably allied to the Zionist state. Among the Mossad agents who entered Dubai to kill Mabhouh, twelve agents used stolen or forged British passports, three Australian, three French, one German and six Irish. These agents assumed the identity of European citizens in order to commit murder in a sovereign nation.
Once again the PMAJO demonstrate that its first loyalty is to the Israeli secret police, even when they violate the sovereignty of major US allies. No doubt the PMAJO would readily support the Israeli Mossad, even if it were shown to have used U.S. documents to assassinate Mabhouh. In fact, two of the 26 Israeli assassins, carrying fake Irish and fake British passports, are known to have entered the United States after the killing and may still be here.
The position adopted by the Daily Alert and the PMAJO in defense of Israel’s international terrorist act followed several lines of attack, which will be discussed below. These include: (1) blaming the victim, (2) claiming that extra-judicial, extra territorial murders are legal, (3) minimizing the murder of ‘one’ individual, (4) deflecting attention from the Zionists by blaming ‘other Arabs’, (5) favorably comparing Mossad assassinations to US killings in Afghanistan, (6) trivializing and relativizing world condemnation, (7) citing “self-defense”, (8) praising the high tech ‘operational details’ of the assassination and (9) discrediting the Dubai police investigators rather than the Israeli perpetrators.
Abridged articles, cited in the Daily Alert, have appeared in the op-ed pages of several US, UK, Canadian and Israeli newspapers, as well as in right-wing magazines like Forbes and Commentary. The mainline Zionist propaganda technique is to avoid any discussion of Israel’s egregious crimes against sovereignty, due process, international law and the personal security of individuals. In doing so, the Daily Alert adopts the propaganda techniques common to all totalitarian regimes practicing state terrorism.
(1) Blaming the Victim
On February 22, the Daily Alert (DA) headlined two articles, which were entitled: “Killed Hamas Official betrayed by Associates says Dubai Police Chief” and “Hamas: Assassinated Operative put Himself at Risk”. The DA forgot to mention that Israeli secret police had been tracking their prey for over a month (having failed to assassinate him on six previous attempts) and that the Dubai Police Chief was not blaming Hamas officials but was in the process of accumulating evidence, witness statements, videos and documents proving the Israeli identities of the assassins. Needless to say, if we were to accept the American Zionists’ argument that any leading opponent of Israel, who travels without an army of bodyguards, is “putting himself at risk“, then we must acknowledge that ours is a lawless world where Israeli hit squads are free to commit murder anywhere, any time.
(2) Extra-Judicial, Extra territorial Murder is “Legal” (At least if the killers are Mossad)
The February 22 and February 24 issues of the DA include two articles arguing that Israel’s practice of extra-judicial, extra-territorial murder is legal. One article is entitled, “The Legality of Killing of Hamas Mahmoud al Mabhoud” and the other, “The Proportionate Killing of Mahmoud al Mabhoud”. These avoid any reference to international law, which emphatically rejects cross-border, state-sponsored murders. Legality, for the PMAJO, is whatever the Israel’s secret police apparatus deems expedient in pursuit of its goal of eliminating leaders who oppose its colonial occupation and expropriation of Palestinian lands. If Israel’s extra-judicial, extra-territorial murder of an adversary in Dubai is legal, why not assassinate opponents in the US, Canada, England or any other country where they might travel, live, work or write? What if the critics and opponents of Israel decided that it was now “legal” to murder Israel’s supporters wherever they lived citing the Daily Alert’s definition of legality? We would then find ourselves in a lawless world of “legal” murder and totalitarian cross-border surveillance.
(3) Minimizing the Murder
The Feb 22, 24, and 25 issues of the Daily Alert deflect attention from the Mossad murder by making comparison to the hundreds of Afghan civilians killed by US drone attacks. The claim is that “targeting individuals” is less a crime than mass killings. The problem with this argument is that for decades Mossad has “targeted” scores of opponents overseas and killed thousands of Palestinians in the occupied territories (where they work with the domestic secret police, Shin Bet, and the military, IDF). Moreover, this argument linking Israel’s extra judicial assassinations with US colonial killing of Afghans is hardly a defense of either. By implicating the US in its defense of state terror, Israel is holding up the worst aspects of American imperialism as a standard for its own political behavior. One state’s crimes are no justification for another state’s crimes.
(4) Blaming the Arabs: Deflecting Attention from Israel
The DA Feb. 22 article entitled “The Assassination Heard Around the World” insinuates that the murder was a “result of a Hamas power struggle” or by one of “many Arab groups who loathes the Islamist Hamas”.
In other words, all the forged or stolen European passports of Israeli dual citizens, and the Dubai security videos of Mossad operatives in various costumes, not to mention the jubilant affirmation by top Israeli leaders of the killing, was in reality ‘Arab tricks’. This crude propaganda ploy by the most prominent Jewish American organization reveals their own descent into a fantasy land of self-delusion, possible only in the closed world of US Zionist politics.
(5) Technical Proficiency
The DA published several articles praising the technical details of the Mossad assassination in Dubai, an aspect of the operation, with which few Israel security experts would agree. The Feb. 24 DA article entitled, “Assassination Shows Skillful Planning” chastises Israel’s critics for not recognizing the high quality of the “operational aspects” of the killings and recommends its “lessons for all intelligence services around the world”. Like sociopaths and serial killers, US Zionists openly promote Israeli death squad techniques to all fellow state terrorists. In the DA, professional techniques of assassination are far more important than universal moral repugnance of political murders.
(6) Discrediting the Investigators While Defending the Perpetrators
The DA on Feb. 25 cited a long and tendentious attack on the Dubai police, published in Forbes Magazine, which ridiculed their meticulous investigations uncovering Mossad’s roles in the murder. In this article, the Dubai authorities were condemned for uncovering Israeli involvement while not investigating the source of the murder victims’ … Iraqi passport! Instead of encouraging the Dubai police pursuit of justice, the Daily Alert published a long diatribe implicating Dubai in the attacks of 9/11/2001, its continued trade with Iran, its ‘involvement’ in international terrorism etc. There was no mention of Dubai’s relatively friendly position to Israel and Israelis prior to Mossad’s blatant violation of its sovereignty.
Conclusion
The American Zionist propaganda campaign in defense of Israeli state terror and, specifically, Mossad’s murder of a Hamas leader in Dubai, relies on lies, evasions and specious legal arguments. This “defense” violates all precepts of a civilized society as well as the most recent American federal laws prohibiting all forms of support for international terrorism. The PMAJO can pursue its defense of Mossad’s acts of international terrorism with impunity in the US because of its power over the US Congress, the Obama White House and the American mass media. This ensures that only its version of events, its definition of legality and its lies will be heard by legislators, echoed by Zionist activists and embellished by its solemn defenders in academic and journalistic circles. To counter the American Zionist defense of Israel’s practice of extra-territorial, extra-judicial executions by the Mossad, we need American writers and academics to step forward. It is time to expose their flimsy arguments, bold-face lies and audacious immorality. It is time to speak out against their impunity, before another Israeli secret police murder takes place, possibly inside the USA itself and with the shameless complicity of Zionist accomplices.
The authorities in Dubai have found clear evidence that the Mossad assassination team received support from European Zionists. The hotels, air tickets and expenses were paid with credit cards issued in the US. Two of the killers may be in the US now. Will a time come when American Zionists, who are unconditional public defenders of Mossad killings, cross the line between propaganda for the deed to become accomplices of the deed? The robust American Zionist defense of Mossad’s overseas assassinations does not augur well for the security of Americans in the face of Israel’s willing U.S. accomplices.
James Petras, a former Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York, owns a 50-year membership in the class struggle, is an adviser to the landless and jobless in Brazil and Argentina, and is co-author of Globalization Unmasked (Zed Books). Petras’ most recent book is Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (Clarity Press, 2008). He can be reached at: jpetras@binghamton.edu. Read other articles by James, or visit James's website.
Source
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Vrouwen in't zwart
4-3-2010
Laten we het eens dicht bij huis houden. Stel je staat bij de paspoort controle op Schiphol op weg naar je prettige vacantie bestemming. De douane ambtenaar bekijkt je paspoort en zegt: ‘een minuutje graag, moet even overleggen met mijn collega’.
Even later krijg je het paspoort terug en de vriendelijke douanier wenst je een goede reis. Een paar maanden, misschien een jaar later wordt je wakker en zie je opeens je naam en foto op alle tv zenders en kranten voorpagina’s. Je zeggen dat je een van de 26 moordenaars bent van een Palestijnse Hamas commandant en je vreest voor je leven.
Zo moet het de gechoqueerde 13 Israëliërs zijn vergaan, met een Brits of ander paspoort, wier identiteit gestolen bleek. Ze begrijpen dat hun regering niet alleen Palestijnen de dood injaagt, maar ook geen enkel respect heeft voor de veiligheid van de eigen ingezetenen.
Volgens de Britse Sunday Times was niet alleen de Mossad betrokken bij deze moordpartij, maar zou premier Netanyahu persoonlijk z’n goedkeuring hebben gegeven om al- Mabhoud, een van de oprichters van de militaire tak van Hamas op deskundige wijze om het leven te brengen, zodat het zou lijken op een natuurlijke dood. Ahmed Yassin, een van de oprichters van Hamas had indertijd een andere behandeling gekregen. Hij werd in maart 2004 door 3 raketten gedood, vanuit een Israëlische gevechtshelikopter afgeschoten, midden in Gaza stad, waarbij willekeurige omstanders gedood en gewond werden. De zo cynisch genoemd ‘bijkomstige schade’.
Hoe eenvoudig was het niet geweest deze blinde oude man, die z’n leven lang aan een rolstoel gekluisterd was, voor een rechtbank aan te klagen en zo nodig te berechten. Maar trots op de flamboyante macho James Bond stijl noemt de Mossad zichzelf de ‘beste geheime dienst ter wereld’, en tegelijk zien we minister Lieberman op de TV journalisten uitlachen: ‘allemaal onzin, jullie kijken teveel naar spionage films’.
Deze doods eskaders hebben een lange bloederige traditie van buitengerechtelijke moorden, sabotage en terrorisme in Europa [Berlijn, Noorwegen, Denemarken], Amman, Beirut, Tunis, Damascus en nu Dubai.
Al voor de staat Israël bestond tijdens het Britse Mandaat waren de Zionisten berucht om hun terroristische acties tegen de Arabische bevolking en Britse doelen. In 1924 werd de Nederlandse dichter Jacob Israël de Haan vermoord in opdracht van de paramilitaire Hagana, de voorloper van het Israëlische leger. Zijn misdaad: hij was een voorstander van samenleven van Joden en Arabieren.
In de veertiger jaren werd o.a. het hoofdkwartier van de Britten: het King David hotel gebombardeerd door de terroristische organisatie Irgun. Verantwoordelijk daarvoor was - het blijft in de familie - de vader van voormalig minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Tzipi Livni, zelf eerder Mossad lid. En het vreselijke bloedbad in het Palestijnse Deir Yassin met meer dan 200 doden o.l.v. commandant Menachem Begin. De andere kant van de ‘war on terror’.
Albert Einstein, Hannah Arendt en andere joodse publieke figuren publiceerden na het uitroepen van de staat een open brief in de New York Times in dec. ‘48 met het verzoek ‘geen steun te geven aan de fascistische terrorist Begin, die in Amerika op bezoek zou komen en ‘die naast Britten en Palestijnen ook de Palestijns Joodse bevolking geterroriseerd had’.
De concurrerende Stern Gang o.l.v. Ytzhak Shamir had als specialiteit het vermoorden van hoge VN mensen zoals graaf Bernadotte en belangrijke Britse politieke leiders. De beloning voor beide heren kwam na de oprichting van de Israëlische staat. Zowel Begin als Shamir werden Minister President.
Voormalige Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky schreef een boek ’By way of Deception’ over terreur aanslagen uitgevoerd door Israël, waarvan de Palestijnen achteraf de schuld kregen. Hij bagatelliseert de enorme verontwaardiging van de diverse regeringen over de vervalste Engelse, Franse, Duitse en Australische paspoorten - nooit een afkeurend woord over de moord zelf - omdat hij weet dat de geheime diensten van al die westerse landen meestal heel behulpzaam waren bij allerlei operaties en zo nodig zelf de blanco paspoorten verstrekten, als ze al niet in de Israëlische ‘paspoortfabriek’ werden gemaakt. New Zeeland was het enige land dat de diplomatieke relaties afbrak in 2004, toen Mossad agenten daar paspoorten probeerden te krijgen op naam van invalide of overleden personen.
De Britse krant Daily Mail citeert een Mossad agent, die kort van te voren de Dubai actie in een beleefdheidstelefoontje zonder plaats en tijd aan MI6 - de Britse geheime dienst - doorgaf. Tegelijk kondigde Minister President Brown aan dat het misbruik van Britse paspoorten tot op de bodem te gaan uitzoeken, maar was de Britse minister Miliband, die enige voorkennis ontkende, alweer opgelucht onderweg naar de receptie van de net opgeknapte Israëlische ambassade in London.
Ondertussen jagen de Amerikaanse en Europese regeringen nog steeds op de ‘enige echte’ terroristen in samenwerking met de steeds omvangrijker wordende veiligheidsindustrie.
De normale burger wordt steeds meer als een crimineel behandeld: AIVD oefeningen waarbij eerzame burgers tegen de muur gezet worden, illegaal bewaren van internetinformatie, privacy is onzin, want: ‘ik heb toch niets te verbergen’ dus camera’s op alle straathoeken en vingerafdrukken voor je een nieuw paspoort kunt krijgen.
De mede door de Israëlische hightech industrie ontwikkelde verfijnde bewaking- en spionage apparatuur geeft dat land nu een koekje van eigen deeg. Want ook voor de Israëlische staats terroristen is het niet zo makkelijk meer die geraffineerde paspoorten in de eigen garage na te maken. Zo kwam men op het idee echte Israëlische mensen hun identiteit af te pakken en die op maagdelijke paspoorten te zetten.
En dat idee kwam weer vanzelf ter tafel, als bijproduct van het zionisme, aangezien willekeurige mensen uit de hele wereld het recht hebben om bij aankomst in Israël automatisch staatsburger te worden. Tenminste wanneer je joods bent.
Dit werd pas bekend, toen na een mislukte Mossad moord aanslag in Amman in 1997 twee Canadese paspoorten te voorschijn kwamen. Na onderzoek van de Canadese regering bleek dat joodse Canadezen, die naar Israël immigreerden, routinematig gevraagd werd hun paspoorten af te geven voor Mossad gebruik. Boven de wet.
Tegelijkertijd worden identiteitspapieren van Palestijnen afgepakt; ze worden uit hun huizen, uit Jeruzalem of van hun land gegooid en ze mogen na een studie of vacantie in het buitenland niet meer hun bezette, gekoloniseerde land in. Onder de wet.
Het enige land dat oprecht boos blijkt en de zaak heel hoog opneemt is Dubai. Hoe kon die arrogante Mossad denken dat deze regering, die goede betrekkingen met Israël onderhoudt, niet van dezelfde verbeterde grenscontrole techniek en database gebruik zou kunnen maken? Veronderstelde de Mossad, dat Dubai de zaak wel niet zou willen uitzoeken omdat ze bang waren de goede relaties met het westen op het spel te zetten? Op een gegeven moment maakt het geloof in de eigen superioriteit en de zekerheid zich nooit ergens voor te hoeven verantwoorden de ‘hit squads’ overmoedig en gaan ze fouten maken.
Op vliegvelden en alle hotel kamers en gangen zijn ze te zien, de spionnen als Sinterklazen in de weer met het op en -afzetten van pruiken en baarden, lachend met het tennisracket poserend als verliefd stelletje, met z’n zesentwintigen bezig om een persoon een injectie te geven en in een kussen te smoren.
Foto’s, namen, hotelvideo’s en creditkaarten, vingerafdrukken van alle vermoedelijke verdachten zijn in kaart gebracht en over de hele wereld gepubliceerd. Het is al bekend dat de creditcards afkomstig zijn van een Amerikaans bedrijf Payoneer, met een researchcentrum in.... jazeker: Tel Aviv, die de prepaid kaarten verstrekte en de directeur is uiteraard een voormalig lid van een elite gevechtsgroep van de IDF. De rol van de obscure Metabank in Iowa in de VS wordt nog uitgezocht alsook of/hoe de Amerikaanse zionistische lobby Aipac bij de financiering betrokken is. Volgens een vroegere CIA agent Bruce Riedel probeert de wakker geworden regering van Dubai niet alleen deze moordenaars bende op te rollen, maar vermoeden ze dat er wellicht een hele Mossad cel in Dubai genesteld is. Het ideale land voor het opzetten van langdurige geheime operaties tegen Iran.
Maar al deze geheimzinnigheid geeft ons alleen maar meer energie om met onze publieke acties door te gaan. We vragen jullie een brief te schrijven naar de directeur van de Carnegie Foundation mr S. Van Hoogstraten, carnegie@carnegie-stichting.nl, die het CIDI de kans geeft het Haagse Vredespaleis te misbruiken voor een symposium op 9 en 10 maart waar o.a. de vice premier van Israël en als altijd minister Verhagen het woord zullen voeren.
Voor meer informatie en voorbeeldbrief zie
http://www.palestina-komitee.nl/NPK-berichten/176
Dus nog genoeg te doen, lieve vriendinnen en vrienden, maar kom eerst naar onze wake op 5 maart op het Spui [trek s.v.p. iets zwarts aan].
ISRAEL:
Stop de invasies in Gaza en landconfiscaties in Palestijns gebied
Weg met de annexatie muur - The wall must fall
Beindig de bezetting van de Westoever, omsingeling en uithongering van Gaza
Ontruim alle sinds 1967 gestichte nederzettingen
Erken het recht op terugkeer van Palestijnse vluchtelingen
Jeruzalem, hoofdstad voor twee volken
Bron
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HLN, Belgie
Politie Dubai wil Netanyahu arresteren
2-3-2020
De politie van Dubai wil dat het Openbaar Ministerie een arrestatiebevel uitvaardigt tegen de Israëlische premier Benjamin Netanyahu. Volgens Dahi Khalfan, de baas van de politie in het emiraat, is het duidelijk dat de politicus opdracht heeft gegeven voor de moord op het Hamaskopstuk Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Die had op 20 januari plaats in een hotelkamer in Dubai.
De opsporingsinstanties in Dubai gaan er al langer vanuit dat 27 agenten van de Israëlische geheime dienst Mossad de moord hebben uitgevoerd. Volgens Israël is daarvoor geen bewijs.
Mossad
"Ik ben er nu helemaal zeker van dat het de Mossad was", verklaarde de baas van de politie in Dubai vandaag. Hij wil dat het OM ook een arrestatiebevel uitvaardigt tegen Mossad-topman Meir Dagan.
De verdachten van de moord op al-Mabhouh gebruikten valse Britse, Australische, Franse, Ierse en Duitse paspoorten. Dat leidde tot een diplomatieke rel tussen Israël en de betrokken landen. (anp/sps)
02/03/10 23u06
Bron
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Mondoweiss
Dubai puts wind under the wings of… Goldstone
by Philip Weiss
1-3-2010
Wow, I missed this. Fallout from Dubai assassination is hurting Israel’s push against Goldstone!! "Australia Abandons Israel."
You see, Australia abstained on the vote in the UN calling for further investigation of the Gaza onslaught, stemming from the Goldstone Report. And France and England switched their votes, to call for more investigation.
In New York on Friday night, Australia abstained from a resolution calling for further investigation of the 2009 Gaza conflict and war crimes allegations. Not so long ago Australia was one of 17 countries to join Israel to vote against a similar resolution. The message is clear.
Britain and France went further. Having abstained in the vote last November, on Friday both backed the need for further investigations. Germany switched along the same lines as Australia while Ireland – the other country caught in the visa scandal – has voted for investigation both times….
And from the Sydney Morning Herald:
One Department of Foreign Affairs source told the Herald there was no doubt the decision to abstain was intended as a sign to Israel not to take Australian support for granted.
”A number of things made it easier for us to switch our vote,” the source said.
”Firstly, the Americans helped the Palestinians to soften the wording of this resolution compared to the last one. Secondly, a number of other countries had indicated that they were toughening their own positions on Goldstone.
Thanks to Alex Kane.
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de Israel Lobby
Europe wary of following Dubai killers' trail
GENEVA — A killer — or killers — may be on the loose in Europe after a Hamas operative was slain last month in Dubai.
European nations, however, seem to be in no rush to find him, her or them.
The spotlight is falling on those countries where police say the alleged assassins' trails begin and end: Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands.
Authorities there have either declined to say whether they are investigating, or told The Associated Press they have no reason to hunt down the 26 suspects implicated in the Jan. 19 killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
European countries' reluctance to investigate may have something to do with the widely held belief that the killing of al-Mabhouh was carried out by a friendly country's intelligence agency — Israel's Mossad. The Jewish state has previously identified him as the point man for smuggling weapons to the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers.
Experts say arresting Israeli agents — or even digging up further evidence that Israel was involved — could be politically costly.
"I would guess that it's in the political interest of certain countries not to get proactive in this case," said Victor Mauer, deputy director of the Center for Security Studies at Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology.
"Countries such as Germany have a special relationship with Israel because of their history and therefore wouldn't be interested in investigating," he said.
Switzerland's federal prosecutor's office says it has "no evidence relating to this case that would justify opening an investigation," although Dubai police insist that eight of the suspects fled Dubai for Zurich.
Dutch and Italian officials, too, said they aren't investigating the flight of six suspects to Amsterdam and Rome.
All three countries say they haven't received an official request for help from Dubai yet, though authorities there have asked Interpol to circulate arrest warrants that the Arab emirate issued for 11 suspects charged with "coordinating and committing the murder."
Dubai police did not respond to repeated requests by The Associated Press for comment on cooperation with European and other police agencies in the investigation. But Dubai Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim was quoted by the Dubai-based Al Bayan newspaper Saturday as saying that an international security team has been created through diplomatic channels to aid in the cross-border hunt. No other details were given in the report.
France, meanwhile, has said it is only probing the alleged use of three French passports in the crime. Two suspects landed in Paris on Jan. 20. Their trail ends there.
Germany, too, is investigating the possibility that a forged or illegally obtained German passport was used. But prosecutors in the German city of Frankfurt, where four suspects returned, say they aren't investigating the killing itself and don't see any reason to, as most likely no crime was committed in Germany.
Philip Alston, an independent U.N. human rights investigator and New York University law professor, said European countries would be wrong to ignore the case.
"If a foreign intelligence agency was responsible for the killing of al-Mabhouh, the matter should clearly be classified as an extrajudicial execution," he said. "All states have an unquestioned obligation to investigate and prosecute anyone accused of a killing who they have reason to believe is within their jurisdiction. Political considerations can never be invoked to avoid taking the necessary action."
Michael Boyle, a lecturer in strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, said European countries were "unlikely or unwilling to make it a serious political issue with Israel. It's going to raise up embarrassing questions and complicate their relationship with Israel," he said.
Boyle said the focus on forged passports made sense, however. "I think there's a concern on the part of European governments that if this process of Israeli operatives using European passports were to continue, that would put European citizens at risk."
Britain has sent a special police investigator to Israel to meet with six dual nationals whose passports were used in the assassination, even though they weren't in Dubai at the time. Australia and Ireland also have sought clarifications from Israel on the alleged use of their passports.
Only Austria has gone further and investigated whether Austrian SIM cards were used. Interior Ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia declined to provide details about the findings except to say there are no indications that there was a "command center" in Austria, as Dubai police have claimed.
Boyle said there was "a certain degree of moral revulsion and disgust" among European countries "because this is a murder."
But "there's an understanding that these sort of intelligence operations get conducted, but don't get caught with it and don't make it politically costly for us. I think that's the real story of the Dubai incident." (bron)
U leest het, onze vriendschap met Israël en onze hypocrisie is zo groot dat onze regering het risico voor Nederlandse burgers voor lief neemt.
Bron
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HLN, Belgie
Moordenaars Hamas-functionaris zitten in VS en Israël
1-3-2010
De moordenaars van Hamas-functionaris Mahmoud al-Mabhuh en hun medeplichtigen zijn na hun misdaad naar de Verenigde Staten en Israël gereisd.
Dat berichtte de in Dubai verschijnende krant Gulfnews onder aanhaling van de politie. De politie had eerder gezegd dat de samenzweerders het Golfemiraat met bestemming Europa en Azië hadden verlaten. Intussen staat nu evenwel vast dat ze van daaruit verder naar de Verenigde Staten en Israël zijn gereisd, aldus de politie.
Al-Mabhuh, die voor de Palestijnse Hamasbeweging wapens aankocht, werd op 19 januari in een luxehotel in Dubai vermoord. De politie gaat ervan uit dat aan het complot voor de moord op de Palestijn minstens 26 mensen betrokken waren, die in opdracht van de Israëlische geheime dienst Mossad handelden. De zaak heeft de betrekkingen tussen Israël en Europa belast omdat de meeste vermoedelijke daders voor hun reis naar Dubai paspoorten uit Europese landen hebben gebruikt.
Volgens de politie hebben de daders al-Mabhuh een spierontspannend middel toegediend en hem daarna verstikt. (dpa/afp/gb)
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Abu Pessoptimist
Saaie moordenaars
28-2-2010
Saai stelletje, die Mossad-agenten. Ik kan me leuker gezelschap voorstellen. Dit zijn er nog eens 15 die door de politie in Dubai zijn geïdentificeerd, zodat het totaal op 26 komt.
Volgens Haaretz zijn de foto's een beetje geshopt, bijvoorbeeld liplijnen of de kleur van ogen is veranderd, zodat herkenning bemoeilijkt wordt. Klinkt me teveel als een science fiction-achtig excuus van een dienst die lelijk in zijn hemd staat. Volgens Dubai is trouwens ook het DNA en de vingerafdrukken van tenminste één agent bekend.
Van de 15 nieuwe gezichten hadden er zes een Brits, drie een Iers, drie een Frans en drie een Australisch paspoort. Australië heeft boosheid getoond, Groot-Brittannië stuurde een politieteam naar Israël. Intussen werd ook bekend dat een aantal agenten creditcards had gebruikt, onder meer van een kleine Amerikaanse bank, Payoneer, die ook een researchafdeling in Israël heeft en geleid wordt door een voormalige officier, Yuval Tal, van de Israëlische 'special forces'. Al met al moet het niet moeilijk zijn de verdachten van de moord op Mabhouh te achterhalen. Maar volgens een bericht van AP gaat dat niet gebeuren. Geeft te veel diplomatieke spanningen met Israël. Zo wordt bijvoorbeeld het spoor van zes verdachten die naar Amsterdam zijn gevlogen niet nader gevolgd, aldus dit bericht.
Bron
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Palestine Telegraph
Will the UK protect its own citizens as much as it protects Israel?
Added by PT Editor pam bailey
by James Petras
28-2-2010
On Jan. 19, Israel's international secret police, the Mossad, sent an eighteen member death squad to Dubai using European passports, supposedly ‘stolen' from Israeli dual citizens and altered with fake photos and signatures, in order to assassinate the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh.
The evidence is overwhelming: The Dubai police presentation of detailed security videos of the assassins was corroborated by the testimony of Israeli security experts and applauded by Israel's leading newspapers and columnists.
The Mossad openly stated that Mabhouh was a high priority target who had survived three previous assassination attempts. Israel did not even bother to deny the murder. Furthermore, the sophisticated communication system used by the killers, the logistics and planning surrounding their entry and exit from Dubai and the scope and scale of the operation have all the characteristics of a high-level state operation. Furthermore, only Mossad would have access to the European passports of its dual citizens! Only Mossad would have the capacity, motivation, stated intent and willingness to provoke a diplomatic row with its European allies, knowing full well that Western European governments' anger would blow over because of their deep links to Israel. After meticulous investigation and the interrogation of 2 captured Palestinian Mossad collaborators, the Dubai police chief has stated he is sure the Mossad was behind the killing.The Larger Political Issues
Israel's policy of overseas assassination raises profound issues that threaten the basis of the modern state: sovereignty, rule of law and national and personal security. Israel has a publicly-stated policy of violating the sovereignty of any and all countries in order to kill or abduct its opponents. In both proclamation and actual practice, Israeli law, decrees and actions abroad supersede the laws and law enforcement agencies of any other nation. If Israel's policy becomes the common practice world-wide, we would enter a savage Hobbesian jungle in which individuals would be subject to the murderous intent of foreign assassination squads unrestrained by any law or accountable national authority.
Each and every state could impose its own laws and cross national borders in order to murder other nation's citizens or residents with impunity. Israel's extra-territorial assassinations make a mockery of the very notion of national sovereignty. Extra-territorial secret police elimination of opponents was a common practice of the Nazi Gestapo, Stalin's GPU and Pinochet's DINA and has now become the sanctioned practice of the US "Special Forces" and the CIA clandestine division. Such policies are the hallmark of totalitarian, dictatorial and imperialist states, which systematically trample on the sovereign rights of peoples.
Israel's practice of extra-judicial, extra-territorial assassinations, exemplified by the recent murder of Mahmoud al Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room, violates all the fundamental precepts of the rule of law. Extra-judicial killings ordered by a state, mean its own secret police are judge, jury, prosecutor and executioner, unrestrained by sovereignty, law and the duty of nations to protect their citizens and visitors. Evidence, legal procedures, defense and cross examinations are obliterated in the process. State-sponsored, extra-judicial murder completely undermines due process. Liquidation of opponents abroad is the logical next step after Israel's domestic show trials, based on the application of its racial laws and administrative detention decrees, which have dispossessed the Palestinian people and violated international laws.
Mossad death squads operate directly under the Israeli Prime Minister (who personally approved the recent murder). The vast majority of Israelis proudly support these assassinations, especially when the killers escape detection and capture. The unfettered operation of foreign state-sponsored death squads, carrying out extra-judicial assassinations with impunity, is a serious threat to every critic, writer, political leader and civic activist who dares to criticize Israel.
Mossad Murders - Zionist Fire
The precedent of Israel killing its adversaries abroad, establishes the outer boundaries of repression by its overseas supporters in the leading Zionist organizations, most of whom have now and in the past supported Israel's violation of national sovereignty via extra-judicial killings. If Israel physically eliminates its opponents and critics, the 51 major American Jewish organizations economically repress Israel's critics in the US. They actively pressure employers, university presidents and public officials to fire employees, academics and professionals who dare to speak or write against Israeli torture, killing and systematic dispossession of Palestinians.
So far, most critical comments, in Israel and elsewhere, of Mossad's recent murder in Dubai focus on the agents' "incompetence", including allowing their faces to be captured on numerous security videos as they clumsily changed their wigs and costumes under the camera gaze . Other critics complain that the bungling Mossad is "tarnishing Israel's image" as a democratic state and providing ammunition for the anti-Semites. None of these superficial criticisms have been repeated by the U.S. Congress, White House or the Presidents of the Major Jewish American organizations, where the mafia rule of Omerga, or silence, reigns supreme and criminal complicity is the rule.
Conclusion
While the critics bemoan the clumsy Mossad job, making it harder for Western powers to provide Israel with diplomatic cover for its operations abroad, the fundamental issue is never addressed: The Mossad's acquisition and alteration of official British, French, German and Irish passports of dual Israeli citizen's underscores the cynical and sinister nature of Israel's exploitation of its dual citizens in the pursuit of its own bloody foreign policy goals. Mossad's use of genuine passports issued by four sovereign European nations to its citizens in order to murder a Palestinian in a Dubai hotel room raises the question of to whom ‘dual' Israeli citizens really owe their allegiance and just how far they are willing to go in defending or promoting Israel's overseas assassinations.
Thanks to Israel's use of British passports to enter Dubai and murder an adversary, every British businessperson or tourist traveling in the Middle East will be suspected of links to Israeli death squads. With elections this year and the Labor and Conservative parties counting heavenly on Zionist millionaires for campaign funding, it remains to be seen whether Prime Minister Gordon Brown will do more than whimper and cringe!
Source: Window into Palestine
Source
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al Manar
Dubai: “All Suspects in al-Mabhouh Murder Hiding Out in Israel”
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Dubai's police chief said on Monday he is sure that all the suspects in the killing of a Hamas chief in a hotel room of the emirate are now hiding out in Israel to avoid arrest.
Mahmud al-Mabhouh, a founder of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic resistance movement Hamas, was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20. Police on Sunday said he had been drugged then suffocated. "I am sure that all the suspects are in Israel," police Chief Dahi Khalfan told a media conference in the Emirati capital Abu Dhabi.
"If they stay in Israel, they won't be arrested, but eventually if they leave they will be arrested," the police chief added, referring to a list of suspects passed on to Interpol.
Khalfan also said travelers suspected of being Israeli will not be allowed into the United Arab Emirates even if they arrive with alternative passports. The Emirates will now "deny entry to anyone suspected of having Israeli citizenship," he said.
It was unclear if the measure would also apply to Israeli athletes competing in international sports events being held there.
Twelve British, six Irish, four French, three Australian and one German passports were used by 26 named suspects, according to Dubai police, who say they had fled the emirate on flights to Europe and Asia.
Police say they are convinced the Israeli spy agency Mossad carried out the Cold War-style hit. Officials in Tel Aviv have refused to confirm or deny the reports, although Israeli media see the killing as the work of Mossad.
CNN quoted Khalfan Sunday as saying that he is now “100 percent sure” the Mossad was behind the assassination. “I used to say 99 percent, but now I can say 100 percent,” he said.
“The Mossad needs to be ashamed of its actions,” Tamim was quoted as saying. “They sent 26, 27 persons to assassinate one man who was involved in the capturing and killing of two Israeli solders.”
In a newspaper report published on Monday, General Khalfan said a 27th suspect had been identified, also travelling on an European passport but this time unspecified.
Citing a source who is "familiar with the situation", the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that at least two of the 26 people suspected of involvement in al-Mabhouh’s assassination traveled to the United States shortly after his death.
The US State Department and Interpol both declined to comment on the report.
According to the report, an investigation revealed that one of the suspects entered the US on February 14 using a British passport. Another suspect, using an Irish passport, entered the country on January 21 – one day after al-Mabhouh was found dead in his Dubai hotel room.
The source said there are no records of either of the suspects leaving the US, but that investigators could not be sure that they were still in the country. The source added that the two could have left the US using different travel documents.
In Abu Dhabi, Khalfan appealed to the Western five countries whose travel documents were used to cooperate in the investigation. "I want the states whose passports were used in the assassination to cooperate with us, and we'll appreciate their cooperation," the police chief said.
Last week the British Times reported that the FBI expressed willingness to investigate the affair as well, due to suspicions that members of the hit squad used American credit cards.
According to the Times, several agents from the British Serious Organized Crime Agency, which is spearheading the investigation, arrived in Dubai and joined a the investigation team in the emirate, which is a popular location for money laundering in British organized crime.
Dubai police last week announced that 14 members of the assassination team used credit cards issued by the US bank META. The investigation carried out by local police revealed that the 26 assassins traveled to Dubai from Hong Kong and six European cities: Zurich, Rome, Paris, Frankfurt, Milan, and Dusseldorf.
On their way out of Dubai, the 26 split up into eight groups and traveled to different cities around the world, some of them using direct flights and others using connecting flights with stops in other cities.
According to the investigation, the assassins passed through Hong Kong, Zurich, Doha, Bangkok, Rome, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Amsterdam, Milan and Paris.
The investigation has caused a diplomatic headache for Israel in which the five countries whose passports were used have all called in Israeli envoys for talks.
Khalfan says the suspects would not have dared used US passports. "I think Israel was scared of provoking a clash with the United States which it considers its best friend," Khalfan told Al-Khaleej newspaper.
On Sunday, Khalfan's deputy, Khamis Mattar al-Mazeina, said in a statement that the killers had used the drug succinylcholine "to sedate Mabhuh before they suffocated him." "The assassins used this method so that it would seem that his death was natural," Mazeina said, citing post-mortem test results.
Succinylcholine, also known as suxamethonium, is used to induce muscle relaxation and is favored by anaesthetists and emergency doctors because of its fast onset.
In addition to the suspects with Western passports, police have announced they have two Palestinians in custody, both residents of the emirate who had fled but were extradited back from Jordan.
According to the Emirati daily Al-Ittihad, a third Palestinian is also being held for questioning but there has been no official confirmation.
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Brisbane Times
Australia abandons Israel in UN vote
JONATHAN PEARLMAN AND JASON KOUTSOUKIS
Latest autopsy reports say top Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was killed. He was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20.
AUSTRALIA has softened its traditionally staunch support for Israel in the United Nations but denied it was linked to tensions over the country's apparent use of forged Australian passports in an assassination in Dubai.
At a vote in the UN General Assembly - where Australia has been one of Israel's strongest supporters - the government abstained from a resolution demanding that Israel and the Palestinians investigate possible war crimes during the assault on Gaza that Israel began in December 2008.
Three months ago, Australia voted against a similar resolution which sought to endorse the Goldstone report - a UN-sponsored paper which accused Israel and Hamas of war crimes.
Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith. Photo: Andrew De La Rue
The Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, said yesterday that the change was not related to the passport scandal and that Australia abstained because the latest resolution did not specifically endorse the Goldstone report.
''Our vote on the resolution was neither determined nor influenced by recent events,'' he said. ''The Australian government always considers UN resolutions on a case-by-case basis and on their merits. Australia abstained on this resolution because, unlike previous resolutions, it did not endorse the Goldstone report.''
Six other countries also changed their votes, including Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Some countries, such as Britain, France and New Zealand, shifted from abstention to support. Others, such as the United States and Canada, voted against both resolutions.
Britain, France and Germany have all recently expressed anger at Israel after their passports were caught up in the Dubai plot.
One Department of Foreign Affairs source told the Herald there was no doubt the decision to abstain was intended as a sign to Israel not to take Australian support for granted.
''A number of things made it easier for us to switch our vote,'' the source said.
''Firstly, the Americans helped the Palestinians to soften the wording of this resolution compared to the last one. Secondly, a number of other countries had indicated that they were toughening their own positions on Goldstone. But there is no question that the debacle surrounding our passports being used in Dubai helped to make up the government's mind to abstain. The final decision was taken late on Friday, Australian time, just a few hours before the vote.
''Our pattern in the past has been to vote with the US when it comes to Israel, to show as much support for Israel as possible.
''We were also aware that the UK's decision to vote in favour of the resolution was influenced by the fact that so many of their citizens had been caught up in the Dubai assassination.''
The opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman, Julie Bishop, yesterday accused the government of downgrading its support for Israel as part of its campaign to win a UN Security Council seat.
''I don't understand the government's change of heart,'' she told the Herald.
''The Coalition's position has been consistent. Having voted against the Goldstone report, we would continue to vote against it … Since coming to office the government has weakened Australia's long-held position of supporting Israel at the UN.''
Mr Smith last week publicly summoned the Israeli ambassador, Yuval Rotem, over the suspected use of three forged passports by Israeli spies in the Dubai killing. Mr Smith warned that if Israel was behind the forgeries ''Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend''.
Israel has refused to confirm or deny involvement in the assassination. Its embassy in Canberra would not comment yesterday on the passport scandal or on Australia's UN vote.
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, who has described himself as a lifelong supporter of Israel, indicated on Saturday he did not believe Israel's public response to the incident was acceptable.
Mr Smith has been fiercely critical of the Goldstone report, saying it was excessively focused on Israeli actions and paid insufficient attention to Hamas's rocket attacks against Israel.
Privately, Israeli officials expressed little concern at the vote, saying the new UN resolution simply expanded a plan for internal Israeli investigations of the allegations raised by the Goldstone report.
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the Irish Independent
By Sam Smyth and Shane Phelan
24-2-2010
AN Israeli spy based in Dublin is suspected of supplying information for the forged Irish passports used by the team of assassins who murdered a Hamas commander in Dubai.
And details of more fake Irish passports used in the assassination of a Hamas official are expected to be given to the Irish Ambassador in Dubai today.
Ambassador Ciaran Madden will meet with officials from the United Arab Emirates, who have confirmed that more fake Irish passport numbers had been identified.
Another "three or four fake passports" are expected to be added to the five allegedly used in the assassination of a Hamas commander last month.
Diplomatic sources said that the passport owners whose numbers were used for fake passports had travelled in Europe and the US but not in the Middle East.
The spy is suspected of providing a false address at 6 Elgin Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin -- owned by Jim Reynolds, the brother of former Taoiseach Albert Reynolds -- for one of the passport holders.
As anger about fake passports and the assassination mounts, Fine Gael has called on Foreign Affairs Minister Micheal Martin to brief the Dail.
Billy Timmons, the party's Foreign Affairs spokesman, said: "We must get explanations as to how suspects in an assassination overseas were able to use valid Irish passport numbers on fake passports and provide a bone fide Dublin address when checking out of the hotel."
Sovereignty
He added: "The Irish passport has great standing internationally and the minister must do all he can to ensure its status is not debased."
Speaking in the European Parliament, Labour MEP Proinsias De Rossa said: "The stealing of Irish citizens' identities and the abuse of Irish passports by another state is a gross infringement of Irish sovereignty. It is not the normal practice for friendly states to abuse each other's sovereignty in this way.
"One can only assume that Israel either has no regard for international law or holds Ireland and the other EU states affected in contempt."
It also emerged last night that gardai are to forensically examine the house at 6 Elgin Road. Jim Reynolds said he was "shocked and horrified" that the address of a house he owns was used.
His son, John Reynolds, a promoter of the Electric Picnic, explained that his father had bought the house in the 1960s but it fell into disrepair when there was trouble over the title.
"It was all sorted out about five years ago," said Mr Reynolds. "But we really are upset by all of this."
Officially, the Department of Foreign Affairs was playing down reports that further Irish passports were used in the murder plot. A spokesman said the reports were being examined, but nothing further had been confirmed.
Meanwhile, the department confirmed last night that it had tracked down the last of the five Irish citizens whose passport numbers were used by the team of assassins.
"We have offered to issue them with new passport," a spokesman said. The department said none of the five had encountered any difficulties while travelling abroad.
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Times Online
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was sedated before being suffocated, Dubai police say
By Hugh Tomlinson, Dubai
There were no signs that al-Mabhouh resisted his killers, police said
1-3-2010
The Hamas arms dealer murdered in Dubai was drugged with a strong sedative then suffocated while paralysed but still conscious, police have revealed.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was injected with the fast-acting muscle relaxant succinylcholine, according to a toxicology report released yesterday. He was then suffocated with a pillow in his hotel room in the January 19 hit by suspected Israeli agents.
Succinylcholine is used in intensive care wards, usually to assist the insertion of a tracheal tube. It causes almost-instant loss of motor skills but does not induce loss of consciousness or anaesthesia.
Major-General Khamis al-Mazeina, the deputy commander of Dubai police, said that the drug would have caused “immediate and temporary paralysis” of the victim. “The assassins used this method so that it would seem that his death was natural. There were no signs of resistance shown by the victim.”
Mr al-Mabhouh was murdered in his room at the Al Bustan Rotana hotel on January 19. Four men are believed to have gained access and waited for the Hamas official. His body was not found by hotel staff until the next day. A heart attack was initially diagnosed before further tests revealed that he had been murdered.
British agents from the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) are to interview the 12 British citizens living in Israel whose passports have been linked with the killing. “The citizens are not suspects,” an agency spokesman told the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot. “They will be interviewed as potential witnesses to a crime.”
Dubai police named 26 suspects who they say were involved in the alMabhouh killing but it emerged that the names and identities used had been stolen. More than half the passports used by the killers have now been linked to Israelis who were born in foreign countries but emigrated to Israel. Most of them said that they were shocked to discover that their names were being linked to the assassination.
Paul Keeley, 42, said that he was afraid for his life after his name was released. Friends and family from his home in Kibbutz Nachshonim said that he had left his house to stay with relatives in the centre of the country.
Mr Keeley is said to be consulting lawyers and may file a lawsuit against the state of Israel.
Israeli security agents have advised the individuals whose names appear as suspects not to leave the country because they could be attacked.
Dubai police also say that they will soon reveal details of a new suspect in the case. Three Palestinians are being held in the emirate in connection with the killing.
Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the Israeli Trade Minister, told army radio that he had no idea who killed the Hamas official but that the operation proved that “none of their people are untouchable”.
Source
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Bijgaande brief werd ter plaatsing geweigerd door de NRC.
Betreft het artikel hieronder.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, een Hamas leider, werd in een hotel in Dubai vermoord. Alleen de kaboutertjes geloven dat Israël er niet bij betrokken was. De EU-ministers van Buitenlandse Zaken zijn ontstemd over het gebruik van vervalste paspoorten. (NRC, 23 februari 2010). Al-Mabhouh was onschuldig om tenminste drie redenen: in beschaafde landen is iemand pas schuldig bevonden na een eerlijk juridisch proces en een daaruit voortvloeiende veroordeling, het Handvest van de Verenigde Naties, art. 51, garandeert het recht op zelfbeschikking en de Vierde Geneefse Conventie verschaft mensen die onder een bezetting leven het recht zich ook gewapenderhand te verzetten tegen de bezetter. Israël beschuldigt het slachtoffer van de aankoop van wapens. Daar had hij het volste recht toe. Hoe kan je je anders gewapend verzetten tegen je bezetter?
De EU-ministers komen niet verder dan de moord zelf "een actie die niet kan leiden tot vrede en stabiliteit" in het gebied te noemen. Een veroordeling van standrechtelijke executie, de moord op een onschuldige Palestijn en de schending van de soevereiniteit van de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten zit er niet in. Er is iets grondig mis met het waarden- en normenbesef op ministerieel niveau in de Europese Unie.
Jan Wijenberg
oud-ambassadeur
Den Haag
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Palestina in de Media
De moord op Mabhouh in Dubai
[Reactie aan Humo]
27-2-2010
Waar maken de westerse regeringen zich vandaag druk over na de moord op Mabhouh? Dat hun paspoorten vervalst werden door Israël, wat een misdaad! Niet dat Israël doodseskaders uitstuurt in binnen- en buitenland om tegenstanders te vermoorden, dat lijkt -tot nogtoe- geen probleem.
Nu de Britse Times heeft gevonden waar en wanneer Netanyahu himself de opdracht voor deze executie heeft gegeven, wordt het toch wel zeer moeilijk voor de Europese regeringen om de gebeurtenissen te negeren. Europa dat over heel de wereld de democratie en de mensenrechten wil bevorderen, datzelfde Europa bakt zoete broodjes met een regime dat zich bedient van doodseskaders ?!? Bovendien is Netanyahu een recidivist: ook toen hij in 1997 eerste minister was, had hij al eens opdracht gegeven om een tegenstander te vermoorden - Khaled Meshaal in Jordanië, de opdracht mislukte, de Mossad agenten werden aangehouden (en later uitgewisseld tegen Sheik Yassin).
Iemand schreef ooit: "Israël is de enige staat die niet enkel zijn vrienden, maar ook zijn vijanden zelf wil kiezen". Daarbij executeert het alle Palestijnse leiders, die ooit in staat zouden zijn om een valabele gesprekspartner voor de vrede te zijn. Dat daarbij het vredesproces zelf wordt getorpedeerd is evident, ondertussen gaan ze door met de annexatie van Palestijnse grond en waterbronnen, het verdrijven van de Arabische bewoners uit Oost-Jeruzalem (en Hebron, en...) en het uithongeren van de inwoners van Gaza.
Dat er niet meer protest -en sancties- komen tegen dit moorddadig regime is hoogst verwonderlijk.
Hoog tijd dat de Europese steun aan deze schurkenstaat wordt stopgezet.
Pol Van den plas, Gent
Bron
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Electronic Intifada
The Mossad hit and Israel's path of self-destruction
By Hasan Abu Nimah
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Some of the agents suspected of involvement in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. (Dubai Police)
25-2-2010
The assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas official in Dubai, almost certainly by a death squad dispatched by Israel's Mossad, is by no means the first such aggression against the sovereignty of another state. While Israel has literally gotten away with murder thousands of times, was this one killing too far?
Israel has a long, bloody history of murder, sabotage and outright terrorism all over Europe, in Beirut, Tunis, Amman, Damascus and now Dubai. And that is just what we know about. All of this is allegedly in "self-defense" against "terrorism" even though the Zionist movement in Palestine invented the sort of modern terrorism for which the Middle East became known. It started with countless Zionist bomb attacks on Palestinian civilians from the 1930s, often in markets and cafes, the bombing of the King David and Semiramis hotels in Jerusalem in the 1940s claiming dozens of innocent lives, and the murder of UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte. These crimes, on top of the long history of massacres of Palestinians, Lebanese and other Arabs over the past six decades, were all worn as badges of honor by Zionist leaders including Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir who later became prime ministers.
Current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who according to reports personally approved the killing of al-Mabhouh, must have thought it would be a great achievement celebrated by the "civilized" world that is engaged still in a "war on terror." The so-called "international community," after all, has helped Israel isolate Hamas and labels it a "terrorist" organization despite Hamas' diplomatic overtures, repeated offers of truces and ceasefires, and the mandate it won at the ballot box.
Unfortunately it is not working out that way this time. Counting on the usual international complicity was not that unrealistic on Israel's part. Indeed there has been no clear condemnation of the act of extrajudicial execution of al-Mabhouh, in a hotel room, apparently by electrocution and smothering with a pillow according to The Daily Mail (UK). What has been greeted with indignation is the forging of passports and identity theft.
Meeting in Brussels, EU foreign ministers strongly condemned the abuse of passports, but did not have the courage to publicly name Israel even though several governments including the UK and Ireland had already summoned their Israeli ambassadors. The British and Irish foreign ministers even directly confronted their Israeli counterpart Avigdor Lieberman, who was also in Brussels.
Mossad, the Israeli intelligence and international murder agency, has a long history of using fake and stolen passports of countries including Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany. It notoriously used fake Canadian passports during the attempted murder of Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Amman in 1997. Countries view their passports much like their currencies -- their credibility and value must be defended. The lives of their citizens may well depend on it; an Irish, British or German citizen has to be able to travel all over the world without fear that he or she will be suspected of being a Mossad assassin.
Several years ago, New Zealand, a country of three million people, broke off diplomatic relations with Israel over the use of its passports by Mossad. But apart from that example, most countries have been too timid to confront Israel. That Lieberman refused to provide any additional information or even acknowledge an Israeli role in the Dubai attack when he met with the European foreign ministers is a sign that Israel still feels safe displaying arrogance and lawlessness, because it knows the "international community" has never dared to hold it accountable.
This time, however, Israeli arrogance may have exceeded the limits of what has been tolerated so far, and turned what was supposed to be an "heroic" act into a scandal with far-reaching consequences. There are some specific and general factors that contribute to that. First, the crime was committed on the territory of a moderate Arab country whose support for peace with Israel has been practically translated into unofficial bilateral relations. A high-level Israeli delegation had been in the country only days before the Mossad hit squad arrived. Showing so much contempt for a leading moderate Arab state gives a very bad example for any other state that might consider softening its position toward Israel (as the United States had been demanding as "confidence-building measures" for the "peace process").
A second factor is that Israel mostly used stolen identities of living people, whose very public shock and fear at waking up to find their names splashed over the newspapers and linked to a murder, could not easily be hidden.
A third factor is that the Israeli adventure in Dubai carries the traits of just the kind of terrorist act the world has been mobilizing to fight. Improvements in passport security were introduced in recent years to stop terrorism, but here is a country violating and sabotaging these security measures in order to commit murder.
We cannot assume that the assassination in Dubai will be the straw that breaks the back of Israeli immunity and impunity, but we can be sure that the general erosion of Israel's standing as a result, particularly of its aggressive recent wars on Lebanon and Gaza, means that what was tolerated by the world more easily five or ten years ago, is less tolerated now. Global public disgust at Israeli actions has reached levels that may require governments who normally prefer complicity and silence to act.
And when there was a "peace process," Israel's crimes particularly against Palestinians were ignored in the interests of not damaging relations or slowing momentum toward the hoped-for successful conclusion. But no one today -- except the most naive or delusional -- believes that there is any peace process. Despite Israel's efforts to blame the Palestinians, only the most pro-Israel extremists deny that Israel's aggressive colonization in Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the siege on Gaza, is what killed any prospect of a negotiated solution for the foreseeable future.
Consider that just days before the passport affair broke out, Israel was once again pressuring the UK to change its laws to protect Israeli officials from arrest for war crimes should they visit London. Although British officials had publicly expressed shameful enthusiasm to tailor UK law to meet Israeli needs, they may now face real public opposition if they attempt to change it. What interest does the UK have to protect the likes of Tzipi Livni from arrest if the facts and evidence make it necessary?
The truth is that as it becomes desperate, Israel is turning ever more wild and dangerous, not only for its neighbors but for world peace, security and prosperity. Without constant pressure from the Israel lobby, there may have been no invasion of Iraq. Today, it is Israel and its apologists who are constantly inciting confrontation and war against Iran when most of this region wants peace and good relations.
Even if the countries harmed by Israel's latest brazen act do not hold it properly and adequately accountable -- as they must and should -- it appears that it is on a path of self-destruction. The great fear is how much more harm it will do to others on the way.
Hasan Abu Nimah is the former permanent representative of Jordan at the United Nations.
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HLN, Belgie
Australië roept Israëlisch ambassadeur op matje over Dubai-moord
25-2-2010
Australië heeft zijn toon verhard in het dossier rond de moord op een Hamas-verantwoordelijke in Dubai, waarbij het moordcommando onder meer over Australische paspoorten beschikte. De Australische eerste minister kondigde aan de ambassadeur van Israël op het matje te zullen roepen. De Israëlische Mossad zou achter de moord zitten.
"Australië mag zich niet in stilzwijgen hullen over dit onderwerp", verklaarde premier Kevin Rudd. "Als de Australische paspoorten zijn vervalst of gebruikt door om het even welk land, zeker met het doel om een moord te plegen, dan verontrust ons dat heel erg. We willen nu de zaken verduidelijkt zien". Hij waarschuwde nog "geen enkel detail te zullen verwaarlozen".
26 verdachten
De politie van Dubai heeft intussen een lijst met 26 verdachten opgesteld voor de moord op Mahmoud al-Mabhouh van Hamas. De meeste verdachten hadden een Brits paspoort, maar drie droegen een Australisch paspoort. Volgens de Australische minister van Buitenlandse Zaken werden deze paspoorten gemanipuleerd, maar is het nog niet duidelijk door wie. De houders van de paspoorten wonen alledrie in Israël. "We hebben nog geen duidelijkheid of deze mensen betrokken waren of het slachtoffer waren van identiteitsdiefstal". (belga/kh)
25/02/10 04u44
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al Jazeera
Lieberman is dying to say it
By Marwan Bishara
23-2-2010
When Europe's blood pressure went up over the use of fake European passports in the assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, changed his line from ambiguity to deniability. There is no proof of Israeli involvement, he retorted. And that is that.
My guess is that Lieberman had to 'cut the ambiguity' because the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, does not want to further exacerbate tensions with its European allies against the backdrop of continued illegal Jewish settlements and a deadlocked 'peace process'.
But Lieberman, the eccentric former nightclub bouncer, is dying to take responsibility for the assassination of Israel's "enemy combatant" to borrow from the Pentagon's dictionary.
Or, to paraphrase one of Hollywood's epics, A Few Good Men, " ... he's pissed off that he has to hide behind all this ... he wants to say that he made a command decision and that should be the end of it".
Lieberman loves to boast
An immigrant from Moldova who made his way to become Netanyahu's bureau chief in the mid-1990s, Lieberman made a name for himself in Israeli politics by calling in 1998 for the bombing of the Aswan Dam in retaliation for Egyptian support for the then Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
Lieberman reportedly called in 2002 for the transfer of Palestinian citizens of Israel from their homeland, claiming that there is "nothing undemocratic about transfer".
The following year, the head of the Yisrael Betainu Party called for thousands of Palestinian prisoners to be shipped to the Dead Sea and drowned there.
In 2006, he called for the assassination of Arab members of the Knesset who met with members of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority.
And in 2008, Lieberman told Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, to "go to hell".
Spineless allies
Alas, none of Israel's spineless allies would provide Lieberman with the opportunity to cough it up or tell them to go to hell; none would come out in the open or in private to question the minister or put the heat on Israel to come clean.
Lieberman is right not to bother. As he told his British counterpart, David Miliband: "If someone would present information beyond articles in the media, we would relate to it ... but since there is no such information, there is no need to deal with the matter."
Instead, the British foreign minister pleaded with Lieberman in the most timid of ways. He asked kindly and politely for Israeli "cooperation" with an investigation into the use of forged British passports.
Miliband even tried appeasing arguably the most extremist leader in Israel - who supports the continued illegal occupation and colonisation of Palestinian and Syrian territories - by suggesting that Israel's cooperation is important because it has the most to gain from applying the rule of law in the Middle East!
Other Europeans were less timid, but just as indirect. Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, condemned the assassination and European foreign ministers condemned forging their passports, but no mention of Israel whatsoever, and no attempt to open serious and frank dialogue with it over the assassination that could put Europeans and European security at risk.
So, as expected, the visit ended with Avigdor Lieberman flatly rebuffing David Miliband's request for cooperation with the investigation and instead ridiculing journalists for watching too many Hamas Bond movies.
Proving the need for proof
It is not the Bond movies that influence journalists, but every day news.
Europe and the US are more than willing to accuse Iran of developing a nuclear weapons programme with no proof, but hide behind the lack-of-proof excuse to avoid calling out Israel over forging passports and carrying out extra judicial assassinations. (bold H.)
They justify their escalation with Iran on the basis of 'mounting evidence', when it is at best circumstantial, but avoid confronting Israel over a far less dangerous accusation, when all the circumstantial evidence leads to the Mossad.
When was proof so important for Western powers to act or even to go to war? Did the Nato allies have proof of Osama bin Laden's and al-Qaeda's role in the 9/11 attacks before (or after) invading Afghanistan, or Taliban complicity with the attack? ( bold H.) Osama bin Laden's boasting at a later date hardly counts for proof.
Or, did they have proof of chemical weapons for the invasion of Iraq? Or did they need proof when it could be just as easily manufactured? (bold H.)
As for proof of Mossad's activity, generally Israel's policy of ambiguity covers those acts it carries out, not the ones it would not. In other words, Israel uses denial when it does not want to give the impression it carried out an attack, but when it uses ambiguity, as Lieberman did immediately after the attack, it usually means it did.
In the words of the hero of A Few Good Men, Europe needed to shake Lieberman, "put him on the defensive and lead him right where he is dying to go".
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the Independent
Israel refuses to help Britain with inquiry into fake passports
'No proof' of Israeli part in killing of a Hamas leader, says foreign minister
By Ben Lynfield
David Miliband after his meeting with the Israeli Foreign Minister yesterday
Reuters
23-2-2010
Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman yesterday flatly rebuffed David Miliband's request for cooperation with an investigation into the use of forged British passports in the assassination of a Hamas leader.
The request for assistance came as the total number of fake British passports believed to have been used in last month's assassination rose from six to eight. But private discussions on the sidelines of an EU meeting in Brussels – and an identical request from Irish foreign minister Micheál Martin – yielded no concessions on the Israeli side.
A statement from Mr Lieberman's office reiterated that there was "no proof" of Israeli involvement in the affair. "If someone would present information beyond articles in the media, we would relate to it," he is said to have told Mr Miliband. "But since there is no such information, there is no need to deal with the matter."
Mr Miliband, meanwhile, said simply that he had "set out for the foreign minister the seriousness of the issue". Israel also came under pressure from a joint statement by the EU foreign ministers that "strongly condemned" the use of forged passports, although it did not mention Israel by name.
Israel's position forces the UK to decide whether tensions over the passport use will escalate into a crisis that could affect bilateral relations. The Israeli assumption is that Britain has no such intention. Mr Miliband's references to "the profound concern that exists not just in Britain but all over Europe about this incident" were not matched by any concrete steps.
The British inquiry into the use of passports belonging to dual British-Israeli nationals was announced by Gordon Brown last week after authorities released details of suspects in the killing of a Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, in Dubai. Police there believe the hit squad were from Israel's intelligence agency, Mossad.
Mr Lieberman suggested to Mr Miliband and Mr Martin that the killing may have been the result of inter-Arab feuding. "There is an Arab tendency to blame Israel for everything. In the Middle East there are many internal struggles within states and bodies that aren't democratic like Israel," he said, according to the spokesman.
The EU's statement said that the assassination raised "profoundly disturbing" issues. But Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri criticised its wording. "Condemning the use of passports was insufficient," he said. "The statement did not indicate any condemnation of the crime, Mabhouh's assassination."
In the House of Commons, Europe minister Chris Bryant said that Dubai authorities yesterday forwarded the details of two additional fraudulent documents. The names on the documents were not immediately available. All six of the names released by Dubai police belong to dual UK-Israeli nationals living in Israel. The Dubai police have named 11 of what they say was an 18-member assassination squad.
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Vancouver Sun
Assassins caught on video reveals possible Mossad-Fatah link
By Jonathan Manthorpe
The father of senior Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh holds a picture of his son in the Gaza Strip Monday.
Photograph by: Mohammed Salem, Reuters, Vancouver Sun
In deference to its friends and allies, Israel usually makes efforts to spread a cloak of ambiguity and uncertainty over the regular assassinations of perceived enemies carried out by its spy agency Mossad.
In most cases there have been enough face-saving questions about the identities of the murderers and the motive for killings that Israel's allies in Europe and North America are not forced to make public condemnations or downgrade the relationship.
However, the killing on the night of Jan. 19 in a hotel in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior military commander of the Palestinian radical group Hamas and its chief arms buyer, has been documented in far too much detail to be ignored.
And this was clearly a Mossad operation. Dubai's police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim is so confident of his information he has called for the arrest of Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, who has a record of masterminding assassination operations and who reportedly got Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to personally sign off on the al-Mabhouh killing.
What has embarrassed Israel and may yet bring a chill to relations with Europe and the United States is the professionalism of the Dubai police in identifying the 15-member assassination team and in reconstructing its movements.
Dubai has an extensive network of closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras on every street corner and other public places.
This network, as is well known from experience elsewhere, is not very useful for preventing terrorist attacks or other murderous crimes. But it is very helpful in reconstructing what happened after a crime has been committed.
Dubai also has some state-of-the-art facial recognition software.
These, together with police and security skills honed from working in one of the main spy and arms-dealing marketplaces of the Middle East, enabled the Dubai authorities to put together a minute-by-minute account of the hit team's activities.
Even though the Mossad team was clearly aware of the dangers of Dubai's CCTV -- members frequently changed clothes, wigs and hotels -- the entire sequence of events was caught from the time the squad arrived from various European centres the day before al-Mabhouh arrived from Syria on Jan. 19.
Facial recognition software enabled the Dubai police to match the hit squad with the passports the members used to enter the country.
Much to Israel's embarrassment, it turns out that eight members of the team used faked or forged British passports, six of them with identities stolen from British-Israeli dual citizens living in Israel.
Five had doctored or forged Irish passports, one used a German passport, and the man who managed the operation on the ground, and went by the name Peter Elvinger, had a French passport.
The picture that emerges is of a highly professional assassination squad. The operation went like clockwork and all the hit squad members had left Dubai for a variety of destinations in Asia, Africa and Europe, before al-Mabhouh's body was discovered in the hotel more than 12 hours after his death.
And his killing -- apparently by immobilizing him with an electric stun gun and then smothering him -- was made to look so effectively like death from natural causes that it fooled Dubai authorities for several days.
But although the Dubai police have made public much of the information they have gathered, there are still unanswered questions.
For example, where did al-Mabhouh go for the several hours that he left the hotel on the afternoon of Jan. 19?
There is speculation he met Iranian officials to arrange another shipment of the missiles that Hamas regularly fires into Israel's towns and cities.
And then there's the matter of two Palestinians associated with the intelligence and security operation of Fatah, Hamas' rival for political control of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
Ahmad Hasnin and Anwar Shekhaiber are reported by the Dubai police to have arranged hired cars and hotel rooms in Dubai for the Mossad hit squad. And one of them met chief assassin Elvinger.
They, too, escaped after al-Mabhouh's murder but have been extradited to Dubai from Jordan.
So was this a joint Mossad-Fatah operation to decapitate Hamas?
In the Middle East anything is possible.
jmanthorpe@vancouversun.com
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Times Online
Meir Dagan: the mastermind behind Mossad's secret war
By Uzi Mahnaimi
Mossad spy agency chief Meir Dagan
21-2-2010
In early January two black Audi A6 limousines drove up to the main gate of a building on a small hill in the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv: the headquarters of Mossad, the Israeli secret intelligence agency, known as the “midrasha”.
Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, stepped out of his car and was greeted by Meir Dagan, the 64-year-old head of the agency. Dagan, who has walked with a stick since he was injured in action as a young man, led Netanyahu and a general to a briefing room.
According to sources with knowledge of Mossad, inside the briefing room were some members of a hit squad. As the man who gives final authorisation for such operations, Netanyahu was briefed on plans to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a member of Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza.
Mossad had received intelligence that Mabhouh was planning a trip to Dubai and they were preparing an operation to assassinate him there, off-guard in a luxury hotel. The team had already rehearsed, using a hotel in Tel Aviv as a training ground without alerting its owners.
The mission was not regarded as unduly complicated or risky, and Netanyahu gave his authorisation, in effect signing Mabhouh’s death warrant.
Typically on such occasions, the prime minister intones: “The people of Israel trust you. Good luck.”
Days later on January 19, Emirates flight EK912 took off from the Syrian capital Damascus at 10.05am. On board, as Mossad had anticipated, was Mabhouh, who was also known by the nom de guerre of Abu al-Abd. The Israelis suspected he planned to travel from Dubai to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas to arrange for an arms shipment to Gaza.
As the Airbus A330 rose into the wintry sky and headed south, Mabhouh, an athletic 49-year-old, could see the minarets of the ancient city — his home since he had been deported from Gaza by Israel more than 20 years before.
He had made the trip to Dubai several times before on Hamas business and had little reason to think that in less than 12 hours he would be dead.
From a highway below a Mossad agent watched the departure of EK912. Knowing from an informant at the airport that Mabhouh, who was travelling under an assumed name, had boarded the flight, the agent sent a message — believed to be to a pre-paid Austrian mobile phone — to the team in Dubai. Their target was on his way.
A few hours later, as the world now knows, Mabhouh was murdered in his hotel room — and the Israeli spy agency nearly got clean away. For days the death appeared to be from natural causes.
When suspicions did arise, it was only because of Dubai’s extensive system of CCTV cameras that the work of the assassination team was revealed.
The cameras recorded the hit-team’s movements, from the moment its members landed in Dubai to the moment they left. Last week their photographs were released by the Dubai police and splashed across the world’s newspapers and television screens.
Mossad is now deeply embarrassed. Its use of the identities of British, French, German and Irish nationals as cover for agents to carry out the hit has angered western governments. In the ensuing diplomatic fall-out, sources close to Mossad said yesterday that it had suspended similar operations in the Middle East, mainly because of fear that heightened security would put its agents at greater risk. Dagan’s job is also on the line.
Howver. few believe that Mossad will give up the secret war it has long waged against Israel’s enemies.
Mossad has had a reputation for ruthlessness since it hunted down the Black September terrorists who massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Time and again its vengeful arm has reached out across the Arab world and into Europe, too, smiting enemies.
Under Dagan’s leadership, such operations have increased. Dagan differs markedly from his predecessor, the London-born Ephraim Halevy, a nephew of the late writer and philosopher Isaiah Berlin.
Halevy was dubbed the “cocktail man” for his long chats with foreign diplomats. He shrank from brutal covert operations. Eventually the then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, removed him and appointed Dagan in his place.
The new chief soon began to restore Mossad’s reputation for lethal operations. The tone of his directorship is set by a photograph on the wall of his modest office in the Tel Aviv headquarters. It shows an old Jew standing on the edge of a trench. An SS officer is aiming his rifle at the old man’s head.
“This old Jew was my grandfather,” Dagan tells visitors. The picture reflects in a nutshell his philosophy of Jewish self-defence for survival. “We should be strong, use our brain, and defend ourselves so that the Holocaust will never be repeated,” he once said.
One hit he masterminded was in Damascus two years ago against Imad Mughniyeh, a founder of Hezbollah and one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. Mughniyeh was decapitated when the headrest of his car seat exploded — close to the headquarters of Syrian intelligence.
Six months later, Mossad, in co-operation with special forces, struck again at the heart of the Syrian establishment. General Mohammed Suleiman, Syria’s liaison to North Korea’s nuclear programme, was relaxing in the back garden of his villa on the Mediterranean shore.
His bodyguards were monitoring the front of the villa. Out to sea a yacht sailed slowly by. No noise was heard, but suddenly the general fell, a bullet through his head.
One of Dagan’s most recent concerns has been the rise of the Iranian threat to Israel, both directly and through its links with Hamas. It is in that context that the operation to eliminate Mabhouh should be understood.
Preparations appear to have been in train for months. When Mabhouh landed in Dubai, Mossad agents were waiting for him. They had flown in from Paris, Frankfurt, Rome and Zurich in advance using their forged passports, some based on the details of British nationals living in Israel who were unaware their identities had been stolen. The agents had also obtained credit cards in the name of the identities they had stolen.
Yesterday Dhahi Khalfan, the Dubai police chief, said investigators had found that some of the passports had been used in Dubai before. About three months ago it appears Mossad agents using the stolen identities followed Mabhouh when he travelled to Dubai and then on to China. About two months ago they followed him on another visit to Dubai.
In January, after he had landed and collected his luggage Mabhouh headed for the exit and a taxi for the short ride to the nearby Al-Bustan Rutana hotel. A European-looking woman in her early thirties waiting outside saw him leave and sent a message to the head of the team.
Dubai is a hub of international commerce and intrigue. Scores of Iranian agents are active there and its hotels are often used as meeting places for spies and covert deals. The main concern of the Mossad squad was to corner Mabhouh, alone if possible.
They divided into several teams, some for surveillance of the target and others to keep a look-out, and one for the hit. Some changed their identities as they moved about the city, putting on wigs and switching clothes.
When Mabhouh checked in to the hotel, at least one Mossad agent stood close to him at the front desk trying to overhear his room number. Then two others, dressed in tennis clothes, followed him into the lift to confirm which room he was going to.
According to an Israeli report yesterday he specifically asked for a room with no balcony, presumably for security reasons. The Mossad team booked the room opposite.
Mabhouh left the hotel in early evening, tailed by two of the Mossad team. Hamas also knows where he went and whom he met, but is not saying.
The Dubai police have not released CCTV footage showing exactly what happened next in the hotel, but the available evidence and sources point to two possibilities.
One is that while Mabhouh was out, the hit team entered his room and lay in wait. To do this they would have needed a pass key or would have had to tamper with the lock. It is known that while Mabhouh was out someone had tried to reprogramme the electronic lock on the door to his room.
However, they may have failed to gain entry. If so, the second possibility is that one of the team lured Mabhouh into opening the door after he had returned to his room. Perhaps a woman agent, pictured in CCTV footage in the hotel wearing a black wig, knocked on the door posing as a member of the hotel staff, allowing the hit team to force their way in.
Exactly how Mabhouh was killed remains unclear. The Dubai police said he was suffocated; other sources say he was injected with a drug. But at first sight there was no evidence of foul play.
When the killers left they relocked the door and left a “Please do not disturb” sign on it. Within hours the Mossad agents were flying out of the emirate to different destinations, including Paris, Hong Kong and South Africa.
Nobody suspected anything was wrong until the following day when Mabhouh’s wife called Hamas officials to ask about her husband. He wasn’t answering his mobile phone, she told them. The hotel management was alerted and the room entered.
THERE were no signs of struggle or any violence to Mabhouh, who appeared to be asleep. When he couldn’t be woken, a doctor was summoned from a nearby hospital.
In the room some medicine for high-blood pressure was found — planted by Mossad, say Israeli sources — and the doctor decided that the Palestinian had died of natural causes, possibly from a heart attack. In Gaza and Damascus 40 days of mourning began.
Mossad appeared to have got away with it, though some in Hamas had their suspicions that Mabhouh had been poisoned. They well-remembered a previous Mossad plot in 1997 in which an Israeli agent blew poison into the ear of one of its leaders on a visit to Jordan — an operation authorised by Netanyahu during a previous term as prime minister. The Hamas leader, Khaled Mashal, survived only because two agents were caught — and Jordan demanded that an antidote be handed over.
Some Palestinians also suspect that Yasser Arafat, the long-standing leader who died in 2004, was poisoned, though there has never been any evidence to prove it.
When results of Mabhouh’s post-mortem came through, they were still inconclusive. Yesterday one source claimed that burns from a stun gun were found on his body and that there were traces of a nosebleed, possibly from being smothered. However, no firm evidence of exactly how Mabhouh died, either from natural causes or foul play, emerged.
The uncertainty alone was enough for Hamas to declare that Israel had killed their man. The police investigated, CCTV images were gathered and and the affair began to unravel.
One well-informed Israeli source said: “The operative teams were very much aware of the CCTV in Dubai, but they have been astonished at the ability of the Dubai police to reconstruct and assemble all the images into one account.”
For Israel, the fallout has been considerable and the reverberations continue. The real owners of the stolen or forged passports, several of them Britons living in Israel, have complained that they were innocent victims of a murder plot.
The Mossad agents who used their names have been put on Interpol’s wanted list, and the real individuals are worried that they will now always be associated with the murder of a Hamas official.
Dubai can no longer avoid being embroiled in the Arab- Israeli conflict. It is calling for an international arrest warrant to be issued against Dagan and says it will release more information confirming that this was a Mossad killing.
In Britain there were initial suspicions that the government had been tipped off about the operation, or had even quietly condoned it. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, demanded to know when the Foreign Office had first found out that British passport holders were involved in the affair.
A spokesman for the Foreign Office insisted there was no mystery or cover-up. “Suggestions that the government had prior warning or was in some way complicit in this affair are baseless,” he said.
“The Dubai authorities told us of the role of British passports on February 15 and we were able to tell them the passports in question were fraudulent the very next day.” This account was backed up by a statement from Dubai’s police chief.
However, the broader question of Britain’s response to Israel’s activities remains unresolved.
Gordon Brown has announced an investigation by the Serious Organised Crime Agency into the identity theft, and David Miliband, the foreign secretary, is expected to address the House of Commons on the issue tomorrow.
Israel is a key ally for Britain in the Middle East and an even closer ally of the Americans. Brown and Miliband will hope that the affair will fade away, though the pro-Arab lobby will try to ensure the matter is not easily buried.
Hugo Swire, MP and chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council, said: “These allegations against the Israeli government need to be answered. This is not something that can just be swept under the carpet. You cannot conduct foreign policy at this extremely sensitive time by this sort of illegal behaviour.”
In Israel the reaction is mixed. Few shed tears over the death of one of Hamas’s top men, but there is dismay that Mossad may have damaged the country’s reputation abroad. Though in time the furore will no doubt blow over, critics of Dagan have renewed their demands for him to go.
The mastermind of Mossad may yet find himself a casualty of his own secret war.
Additional reporting: Jonathan Oliver
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PressTV
'Netanyahu authorized Dubai assassination'
 |
21-2-2010
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly authorized the assassination of senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh early January in Tel Aviv.
According to a report published by Times Online Netanyahu held a meeting with Mossad chief Meir Dagan in early January inside the briefing room of the headquarters of the spy agency where "some members of a hit squad" were also present.
Citing Mossad sources, the report said "as the man who gives final authorization for such operations, Netanyahu was briefed on plans to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh."
Sources said Mossad had received intelligence that the Hamas commander was planning a Dubai trip and they started preparing for an operation to assassinate him.
"The team had already rehearsed, using a hotel in Tel Aviv as a training ground without alerting its owners," according to the report.
Thanks to Dubai's extensive system of CCTV cameras, the work of the assassination team was revealed.
Dubai police released the identities of 11 people carrying European passports, including six Britons, three Irish and two French and German, who allegedly were Mossad agents carrying fake European documents.
Interpol has issued "red notices" for the 11 suspects to help find and arrest them anywhere in its 188 member countries.
Dubai police also threatened earlier to arrest Netanyahu, if it determined that Mossad was behind the assassination.
SB/DT
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TIMES 0nline
Dubai hit squad may have used diplomatic passports
ByJames Hider, Jerusalem, and Hugh Tomlinson, Dubai
Michael Bodenheimer: a passport in his name was obtained fraudulently
22-2-2020
The hit squad that killed a senior Hamas official in Dubai may have entered the country using diplomatic passports, officials in the Emirates said yesterday as they called on Britain and other European countries whose documents were forged to launch a full inquiry.
“There is still information that Dubai police will not make public for the moment, especially regarding diplomatic passports,” said Lieutenant-General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai’s police chief.
Authorities have issued international arrest warrants for 11 suspects in the case, but now believe that the team behind the murder numbered at least 17. An insider close to the case said that the diplomatic passports were believed to have been used by as-yet-unnamed suspects, with the countries involved still to be identified.
The UAE’s Foreign Ministry yesterday summoned the ambassadors of all four EU nations whose documents were used. Edward Oakden, the British Ambassador in Abu Dhabi, attended the meeting alongside his counterparts from Ireland, France and Germany. Anwar Gargash, the UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, said that his nation was “deeply concerned by the fact that passports of close allies, whose nationals enjoy preferential visa waivers, were illegally used to commit this crime”.
General Tamim said that the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a founder of Hamas’s armed wing whose death has been blamed on Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad, was “no longer a local issue but a security issue for European countries”.
His warning came after Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas leader, hinted that while his militant organisation — which has carried out scores of suicide bombings — had restricted its operations to Israel in the past, complicity with Israel’s spy agency could lead it to reconsider the policy.
Officials close to the investigation said that at least two more suspects had entered the country on Irish passports. It also emerged that the German passport used by the killers was a real document that had been obtained fraudulently.
Der Spiegel magazine said that it had been issued in the name of Michael Bodenheimer, an Israeli-American whose Jewish parents fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s. The real Michael Bodenheimer, who was born in the United States and now heads a religious school in Tel Aviv, told the magazine that he had never applied for a German passport. The prosecutor’s office in Cologne has opened an investigation into the case.
In the latest twist in the complex affair, the Dubai police chief suggested that one of the slain Hamas leader’s own close associates may have leaked information on his whereabouts to his assassins, calling the unnamed mole “the real killer”.
Palestinian militant groups have often been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence in the past, and usually hand out death sentences to those caught collaborating with the Jewish state.
Hamas, in turn, said that Mr al-Mabhouh, believed to have been responsible for smuggling Iranian arms to the Gaza-based militants, was guilty of several security breaches, including booking his ticket on the internet and telling family members on the telephone of his movements.
“Al-Mabhouh called his family by phone before he travelled to Dubai and told them of his plan to stay in a specific hotel, and he booked his travel through the internet. This undoubtedly created a security breach,” said Salah Bardawil, a Hamas lawmaker.
Ayman Taha, a senior Hamas official, called on Dubai to form a joint investigative committee, something the emirate has so far refused. “We have very important information which has not so far been used,” he said. “We asked the Dubai authorities to be part of the investigation, but until now there has not been a positive response.”
The murdered militant’s brother denied Hamas’s accusation that he might have compromised his own safety. “I am the last one who received a call from Mahmoud,” said Fayek al-Mabhouh. “He didn’t tell me that he was going to Dubai and he never told any one of the family the details of his work or his movements.”
The accusations and countercharges came after suspicion fell on Hamas’s Palestinian rivals, Fatah, following the arrest by Dubai police of two former Fatah security officials from the Gaza Strip for alleged complicity in the hotel hit.
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Palestina in de Media
Het land dat zich alles kon veroorloven
[Reactie op het artikel “Israël wil imago oppoetsen” in De Volkskrant online van 19/02/2010]
21-10-2010
De Israëlische staat wil haar imago oppoetsen. “Welkom in het Beloofde Land, voor Palestijnen echter het beroofde land”. “Wij bouwen een kernmacht, ter land, ter zee en in de lucht, en honderdduizenden Palestijnen brachten wij reeds op de vlucht”, “Nanotechnologie, superwapens, elektrische auto's en medische apparatuur is onze job, maar met ons Apartheidshekken, de bezetting, checkpoints en militaire invallen staan wij aan de top”, “Na de Nakba werd Israël onze staat, alleen voor joden en apartheid daar is het waar het om gaat”, “Israël wil zijn imago oppoetsen, maar moet zich eerst aan democratie en mensenrechten toetsen”.
Stel dat elf leden van de Iraanse Revolutionaire Wachters in het Sheraton in Brussel vermomd als toeristen een joodse topdiplomaat om het leven brachten en nadien uitzwermden naar alle windrichtingen vanuit de luchthaven van Zaventem. Vier uur nadat de feiten werden ontdekt zou de VN-Veiligheidsraad in spoedzitting bij elkaar komen. De internationale massamedia en de zogenaamde internationale gemeenschap van rijke landen zou spreken over een oorlogsdaad en internationaal terrorisme. Men zou de moordaanslag in Brussel in de zwaarst mogelijke bewoordingen veroordelen. Vanaf 1 april 2010 zou een zwaar sanctiepakket ingaan, unaniem goedgekeurd door de VN-Veiligheidsraad. Iran zou zijn aardolie niet langer kunnen raffineren in het buitenland. Iran zou zijn producten, waaronder aardolie en aardgas, niet langer kunnen verkopen op de internationale markt. De banktegoeden van alle Iraniërs in het buitenland zouden worden geblokkeerd. Alle lucht- en zeeverkeer van en naar Iran zou worden stilgelegd. Internationale schepen zouden controleren dat het embargo strikt wordt nageleefd. Over West-Iran zou een no-go zone komen waar de Iraanse luchtmacht niet langer mag vliegen omdat daar een Arabische minderheid woont en deze no-go zone zou worden gecontroleerd door de internationale gemeenschap. Slechts 200 producten vermeld op een lijst van de VN mogen nog Teheran binnen: bouwmaterialen, onderdelen voor machines, medische apparatuur e.d. horen daar niet bij. Men zou de Iraanse leiders zo willen treffen, maar enkel het Iraanse volk schade berokkenen.
Vervang de Iraanse Revolutionaire Wachters door de geheime Israëlische dienst Mossad en stel dezelfde vraag wat zou gebeuren als deze een topman van Hamas in Dubai buitengerechtelijk executeren. Dat ziet men nu, na de aanslag op Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Niets, alleen maar wat geblaat, maar de schapen grazen rustig voort. Dat is het verschil tussen het gedrag van Apartheidsstaat Israël dat wordt getolereerd en de listige politiek om moslims en het Midden-Oosten te verdelen in oorlogen en conflicten om nadien met de natuurlijke bodemschatten te kunnen gaan lopen voor een appel en een ei gebruik makende van lokale marionetten.
Israël mocht heel Libanon in het puin leggen in 2006, 1.500 Palestijnen uitmoorden tijdens de Gazaoorlog in 2008-2009, een Hamas-topman laten liquideren door de Mossad in 2010 en maandag tegen EU-ministers van Buitenlandse Zaken in Brussel zware sancties eisen tegen Iran alhoewel hun eigen broekzakken uitpuilen met kernwapens, tanks met een anti-raket systeem, witte fosfor en onbemande aanvalsvliegtuigen.
Mario Bergen, Leuven
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Palestina in de Media
MOSSAD
[lezersbrief verzonden naar De Standaard, De Morgen, Het Belang van Limburg en naar Humo]
19-2-2010
11 als toeristen vermomde terroristen met valse identiteitspapieren vermoorden Mahmoed Al-Mahbouh, een kaderlid van Hamas. Iedereen wijst naar de Mossad. Buitenlandminister van Israël Lieberman zegt dat Israël niet de gewoonte heeft activiteiten van de Mossad te bevestigen of te ontkennen. Dit is niet erg moedig, zeg maar laf, en dit voor een militaire staat!
Hoe zou de wereld reageren als 11 als toeristen vermomde Palestijnse terroristen Netanyahu zouden vermoorden? Het kot zou te klein zijn en natuurlijk iedereen in shock ! Nu is het een ‘fait divers’ dat snel in de doofpot wordt gestoken. Israël staat nu eenmaal boven de wet en mag zich alles permitteren met de steun van Amerika. En ondertussen bouwen ze naarstig verder aan de illegale Joodse nederzettingen, ook op sabbat want die dag is ook allang niet meer heilig. Het Heilige Land glijdt af naar een duivelse hel.
Jan Berben, Hasselt
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Palestina in de Media
Moordaanslag in Dubai
[lezersbrief naar De Morgen]
19-2-2010
De moordaanslag in Dubai is bijna zeker het werk van de Mossad, een moord in opdracht van de Israëlische regering dus. Want dat weten we al wel: de acties van de Mossad gebeuren steeds met de goedkeuring van de regering.
Daarmee plaatst de Israëlische regering zichzelf op de lijst van terroristische organisaties, een terroristische organisatie die zich bedient van doodseskaders. Met de slachtpartij in Gaza vorig jaar in het achterhoofd kan men alleen maar besluiten: deze staat is een schurkenstaat, de naam "staat" onwaardig.
Volgende maandag zou de Israëlische minister van buitenlandse zaken Lieberman op bezoek komen in Brussel, het is hoogst verwonderlijk dat de Europese ministers hem nog willen ontvangen. Deze man, die bekend en berucht is voor zijn racistische uitspraken -zeg maar Jörg Haider in het kwadraat-is medeverantwoordelijk voor deze buitengerechtelijke executie, en is dus een misdadiger op vrije voeten.
Gelukkig beginnen hoe langer hoe meer Israëli's te beseffen dat hun regering niets doet voor de vrede, en alles doet om het conflict en het geweld aan te wakkeren. De Israëlische kranten staan bol van verontwaardiging. De Europese joden zouden deze beweging ten volle moeten steunen.
En de Europese regeringen zouden het Israëlische regime moeten behandelen zoals het hoort bij een schurkenstaat: isoleren.
Pol Van den plas, Gent
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Palestina in de Media
Israël: geschiedenis van handel in valse paspoorten
[Reactie op het artikel “Dubai: "Mossad zit achter moord Hamasleider" in Het Laatste Nieuws online op 18/02/2010]
18-2-2010
Hoeveel krediet krijgt Israël meer dan een ander land dat zich democratisch noemt? In 2004 werd de stichter van Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, gedood door een aanval met een Israëlische helicopter. Twee maanden nadien werd in dezelfde Gazastrook Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, een andere Hamasleider, gedood door twee Israëlische raketten die op zijn wagen insloegen.
Het aantal gedode Hamasleiders door Israëlische buitengerechtelijke executies is intussen niet meer bij te houden.
Netanyahu gaf tijdens zijn eerste premierschap goedkeuring om Hamasleider Khaled Meshal te doden. Op 25 september 1997 injecteerden Israëlische geheime agenten traagwerkend, maar dodelijk gif in zijn lichaam. Tien Israëlische spionnen waren voordien verkleed als Canadese toeristen en gebruik makend van Canadese paspoorten Amman binnengekomen. Toen Netanyahu geen tegengif wou geven op vraag van Koning Hussein van Jordanië moest toenmalig VS-president Bill Clinton er aan de pas komen om dit alsnog te bewerkstelligen. De geestelijke leider van Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, werd door Israël vrijgelaten in ruil voor de vrijlating van twee Israëlische spionnen door Jordanië. Deze Mossad-agenten wouden schuilen in de Israëlische ambassade na de aanslag op Meshal.
Het was niet de eerste keer dat de Mossad gebruik maakte van bedriegelijke Canadese passen. Zo droeg een agente van de Mossad een Canadees legitimatiebewijs toen zij in 1973 in Noorwegen een moordaanslag pleegde op een man die werd verdacht van medeplichtigheid bij de afslachting die men in München aanrichtte onder de Olympische atleten van Israël. De Mossad viel in Noorwegen overigens de verkeerde man aan.
Bij de moordaanslag op Mahmoud al-Mabhouh maakte de Mossad opnieuw gebruik van valse – Britse, Ierse, Franse en Duitse – paspoorten.
Reeds in 1987 protesteerde Londen bij Tel Aviv voor het gebruik van valse Britse paspoorten. Tel Aviv beloofde toen plechtig aan Londen om Mossad-agenten niet langer te voorzien van Britse nep-paspoorten. De identiteit van zes Britse burgers die in Israël wonen werd in januari 2010 echter gebruikt voor de moordaanslag in Dubai. Zeven van de mobieltjes benut door de moordenaars hadden bovendien Oostenrijkse SIM-kaarten.
In 2004 maakte Nieuw-Zeeland nog bekend dat de Mossad hun paspoorten namaakte voor gebruik door geheime agenten. Met serienummer N379 in hun neppaspoort zouden de Mossad-agenten geen visa meer nodig hebben voor diverse landen. Bovendien kon men deze paspoorten ook aan terroristen zoals al-Qaida doorgeven voor duistere doeleinden. De Thaise politie arresteerde in april 2004 een Thai en Pakistaan die zo'n paspoort in hun bezit handden gekregen, wellicht dankzij de Mossad.
De Israëlische spionnen Uri Kelman en Eli Cara werden na twee maanden gevangenisstraf in Auckland uitgewezen naar Tel Aviv. Hun dekmantel voor een moordaanslag in een derde land was eraan. Diverse valse paspoorten van Nieuw-Zeeland werden door de Mossad eveneens gebruikt in Irak. Deze Mossad-mensen leerden de Amerikanen ondermeer hoe ze de Irakezen moesten martelen in Abu Ghraib. Waarvoor een vals Mossad-paspoort allemaal niet nuttig kan zijn...
Mario Bergen, Leuven
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Check out Robert Fisk's take on this story:
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al Jazeera
Mossad, an Israeli chutzpah
By Marwan Bishara
AFP
The assassination of Hamas leader at a luxury Dubai hotel looks more like a deliberate act of arrogance than not.
18-2-2010
As the storm over the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh picks up momentum, I am not buying into the whole business of lack of competence and ambiguity.
I don't think the Israeli spy/killing agency - the Mossad is that sloppy, or Israel that lax.
True, Israel's mounting arrogance did lead to a number of security screw-ups over the years, and this could be such a repeat. But this operation looks more like a deliberate act of arrogance than not.
If it was merely a question of mistakes or failures, the Mossad would have had to go out of its way to behave so unprofessionally or so incautiously.
Nor do I buy the theory that a less competent foreign agency or group has carried out the operation in a way that implicates Israel. That's just adding insult to insolence.
Generally, assassinations carry double meanings. The first is answered by 'why' and the second 'how'.
The "why" is rather obvious: killing a Hamas leader, regardless of whether he’s trying to buy arms from Iran or not, is a continuation of Israel’s 60 year war on the Palestinian resistance and its leaders.
The more complicated question is "how" he was assassinated. The choice of the method, the timing, the place could be coincidental or it is meant to send a more important signal than the killing itself.
Questionable questions
So why did they carry it as unmistaken murder, instead of say, causing heart failure; or suspected suicide; or leave him in a scandalous situation that make it hard to publicise?
Why would they send 11 or perhaps 17 different individuals carrying forged passports when in past assassination attempts they used far fewer?
Why did they have to look so amateurish with their faces on camera, and their moves so suspect?
Why utilise stolen identities instead of manufactured identities, with real foreign Israeli nationals, instead of fake IDs and fake passport numbers?
Why insist on repeating the conspicuous ‘politics of ambiguity’ when silence or no comment would have done the job better?
The murdered Hamas leader will be replaced in no time, and whatever he was doing in Dubai will be executed by another. But what is the message being sent by this flagrant assassination in Dubai of a Hamas leader against the backdrop of so many other killings over the last several months and years?
Claim to fame
Israel's military and intelligence establishment is not the reactive type. It wouldn't use British passports or Emirati territory to carry its assassinations worrying that they will get all cheeky about Israel's 'war on terror'.
It has long demonstrated that its political system is mostly proactive in the domain of 'security', and the latter trumps all other considerations, be it domestic politics or foreign policy.
In fact, its security takes on an inflated interpretation that justifies the most expansive, even flagrant definitions of deterrence, prevention, and pre-emption.
And it never made any apologies for it. It has always put its security priorities above all others, friends and foes alike.
For Israeli leaders, Israel will do what Israel must, and the world can talk as much as it wants. Its motto: if you can’t be conveniently famous, then be abrasively infamous.
The security establishment, especially the Mossad and the internal security intelligence, the Shabak would rather be feared than respected or admired.
Israel doesn't think linearly in terms of actions and reactions, but rather strategically and systematically. Its objectives and actions, means and missions, work within a certain broad strategy.
Mission possible
Judging from the way Israel seems to implicate into this affair the Palestinian security, Britain, the United Arab Emirates and possibly others, it's clear that its operation theatre against Hamas is once again not constrained solely to Gaza or the West Bank.
If these countries are true partners in the 'war against the terrorists', then Israel expects them to cooperate not conspire. You're either with Israel or with the 'terrorist'!
This operation is a continuation of the same logic behind other recent assassinations, including killing Hezbollah leader Imad Moghaniyyeh, which aims at all the links between Hamas, Hezbollah and their regional allies.
Obviously, Israel's War on Terror is not constrained to the occupied territories. Rather, Israel will continue to make similar claims to those of the US war on violent extremists or terrorists to use the less recent American lingo.
Why, the Israelis argue, is it permissible for the US to carry extra-judicial killings of its enemies' leaders in Pakistan, Iraq, or Yemen using drones and other means, but not for Israel?
Why has the so-called international community been conspicuously silent about American renditions and torture, but not with regards to Israel's similar ways and means?
While some of this might explain Washington’s silence, it doesn't answer the more provocative Israeli question: Why is it ok for the United States to turn the world into its theatre of operation, and not for Israel?
Until it's answered, Israel will continue to act dangerously and with impunity.
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de Standaard, Belgie
Liquidatie Hamas-leider breekt Israël zuur op
BRUSSEL - Groot-Brittannië, Ierland en Frankrijk hebben de Israëlische ambassadeur op het matje geroepen.
19-2-2010
‘Onze onderzoeken tonen aan dat de Mossad betrokken is bij de moord op Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Voor ons is het 99 procent, zo niet 100 procent zeker.' Dat zei luitenant-generaal Dahi Khalfan Tamim gisteren in The National, de belangrijke Engelstalige krant in de Verenigde Arabische Emiraten.
‘De bewijzen waarover de politie in Dubai beschikt, leggen duidelijke banden tussen de verdachten en mensen met goede contacten in Israël', voegde hij eraan toe. Welke bewijzen dat zijn, wilde Tamim niet zeggen.
De liquidatie van Hamas-leider Mahmoud al-Mabhouh op 20 januari in een hotelkamer in Dubai breekt de Israëlische regering steeds meer zuur op. Vanaf dag één werd naar de Mossad gewezen, de Israëlische geheime dienst. Maar de Israëlische regering ontkende staalhard. De voorbije dagen kwamen echter steeds meer gegevens vrij over de daders en werd de link met de Mossad steeds meer gelegd.
Bij de moord gebruikten de daders volgens de politie in Dubai paspoorten van zes Britse staatsburgers die in Israël leven en ook de Israëlische nationaliteit hebben. De foto's op de paspoorten toonden niet de gezichten van de werkelijke eigenaars, maar van onbekenden. Ook de handtekeningen waren vervalst. Daarnaast ging het om drie vervalste Ierse paspoorten, een Frans en een Duits paspoort.
De werkelijke eigenaars van de paspoorten waren geschokt dat hun namen plotseling in verband werden gebracht met de moord. Stephen Hodes verklaarde op de Israëlische radio: ‘Ik weet niet wie hier achter zit. Dit zijn duidelijk niet mijn foto's. Ik weet niet hoe ze aan mijn gegevens gekomen zijn. Ik ben alleen maar bang. Dit zijn grote krachten. Ik heb de voorbije twee jaar Israël niet verlaten en ik ben zelfs nog nooit in Dubai geweest.'
Avigdor Lieberman, de Israëlische minister van Buitenlandse Zaken, bleef stoïcijns onder de beschuldigingen. Hij ontkende de betrokkenheid van Israël niet keihard, maar hij zei dat Israël op het vlak van geheime diensten ‘een politiek van ambiguïteit' hanteert. In elk geval is er volgens hem geen hard bewijs van Israëlische betrokkenheid.
Maar de regeringen in Groot-Brittannië, Ierland en Frankrijk tillen wel zwaar aan de beschuldigingen. Zij riepen elk de Israëlische ambassadeur op het matje. Dublin sprak van een ‘buitengewoon ernstig incident'. De Britse premier Gordon Brown heeft zelfs een eigen Brits onderzoek gelast.
‘Het Britse paspoort is een essentieel deel van het Brits-zijn en we moeten ervoor zorgen dat alles gedaan wordt om het te beschermen', zei hij. Zijn buitenlandminister David Miliband voegde eraan toe dat hij hoopte en verwachtte dat ‘Israël volledig zou meewerken met dit onderzoek'.
De Britten nemen de zaak hoog op omdat het niet de eerste keer zou zijn dat Britse paspoorten door Israël worden gebruikt bij aanslagen. Dat gebeurde ook al eens in 1987. Ook toen werd de Mossad met de vinger gewezen. De Israëlische autoriteiten beloofden destijds dat zulke gevallen zich niet opnieuw zouden voordoen.
Intussen plaatste de internationale politieorganisatie Interpol de namen en de foto's van de elf ‘daders' op zijn Wanted-lijst. Interpol voegde eraan toe dat het denkt dat de verdachten de identiteit van de echte personen gestolen hebben. ‘We plaatsen de namen en de foto's opdat ze niet meer zo gemakkelijk zouden kunnen reizen.'
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de Morgen, Belgie
Dubai: "Mossad zit achter moord Hamasleider "
18-2-2010
De politie van Dubai zegt dat ze 99 procent zeker is dat de Israëlische geheime dienst Mossad achter de moordaanslag op Hamasleider Mahmud Abdel-Rauf Mohammed Hassan zit. De Israëli's ontkennen echter elke betrokkenheid. Het slachtoffer, een van de oprichters van de militaire vleugel van Hamas, werd op 20 januari vermoord.
"Veiligheidsofficieren van Fatah opgepakt"
Een Palestijnse bron meldt ondertussen dat er al drie Palestijnen zijn opgepakt in verband met de moord. Twee van hen zijn voormalige veiligheidsofficieren van de Palestijnse Autoriteit. Ze zouden het elfkoppig moordcommando geholpen hebben om aan Europese paspoorten te raken. De derde is Nehru Massud, een hoge verantwoordelijke van de al-Qassambrigades in Syrië.
Ambassadeurs lossen niets
Wegens de vermoedelijke betrokkenheid van de Mossad vragen verschillende Europese landen uitleg aan Israël over het gebruik van de valse paspoorten bij de aanslag. Het commando zou zes Britse, drie Ierse, één Frans en één Duits paspoort gebruikt hebben.
Groot-Britannië en Ierland riepen de Israëlische ambassadeur in hun land alvast op het matje, maar dat leverde niet veel op. Ron Prosor verklaarde in Londen dat hij niet in staat is bijkomende informatie te verschaffen. Zion Evrony vertelde in Dublin dat hij op dit ogenblik niets weet.
(afp/mvdb/svm)
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18-2-2010
Een geruchtmakende moordzaak in Dubai ontaard in een diplomatieke rel tussen Europese landen en Israël. Frankrijk, Groot-Brittannië en Ierland willen weten of Israël paspoorten stal van hun burgers voor een politiek moord in Dubai.
Een groep van 18 mensen zou op 20 januari Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, een wapenhandelaar van de Palestijnse Hamasbeweging, om het leven hebben gebracht. Bij die mensen zijn paspoorten aangetroffen van Fransen, Britten, Duitsers en Ieren. Met die paspoorten blijkt te zijn gerommeld.
De grote vraag is nu: wie heeft de dader. De geruchtenmachine komt uit op de Mossad en er zijn zelfs commentatoren die zeggen dat de Britten er iets mee te maken hebben.
De Israëlische ambassadeur in Londen moest zich vandaag verantwoorden. Het Britse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken wilde met hem spreken over het gebruik van vervalste Britse paspoorten door zes van de minstens elf verdachten. Ook Ierland en Frankrijk hebben uitleg van de Israëlische ambassade geëist.
De Britse staatssecretaris van Buitenlandse Zaken David Miliband wilde niet kwijt wat er is gezegd tijdens de ontmoeting. ,,Het is zeer belangrijk dat we geen beschuldigingen doen tot we precies weten wat er aan de hand is.'' De Israëlische ambassadeur Ron Prosor wilde ook niets kwijt over de ontmoeting.
Volgens Miliband is Groot-Brittannië vastbesloten om ,,tot de bodem van het schandaal te komen.'' Een correspondent van de BBC schreef dat de verhouding tussen Groot-Brittannië en Israël in een crisis zou zijn als er bewijs was dat Israël Britse paspoorten had gebruikt.
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