Australia sends police to Israel over Dubai assassination

Australian police arrived in Israel on Wednesday to investigate identity theft of dual nationals in connection with the Dubai assassination widely blamed on Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. CSM

Dubai police: Israeli premier faces arrest

The head of the Dubai police is planning to seek the arrest of the prime minister of Israel and the head of the country’s secret service, Mossad, over the killing of a Hamas leader.
Dhahi Khalfan Tamim told Al Jazeera he would ask the Dubai prosecutor to issue arrest warrants for Binyamin Netanyahu and Meir Dagan this week.
Tamim said he was “almost certain” Israeli agents were involved in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Hamas commander, at a Dubai hotel in January. (more…)

Dubai restricts Israeli entry after Hamas killing

Dubai’s police chief said it will enforce an entry ban on Israeli dual nationals, the first sanction by the emirate following its allegations Israeli intelligence agents murdered a top Hamas leader there in January. WSJ

Mossad ‘factory’ churned out fake Australian passports

A former Mossad officer has alleged the Israeli spy agency has its own “passport factory” to create or doctor passports for use in intelligence operations.
Relations between Australia and Israel are under strain after three Australian passports were apparently used by suspects in the killing of top Hamas leader Mahmoud Al Mabhouh in Dubai last month. (more…)

Israel treated Australia “with contempt”

Israel continues to come under fire at home and abroad as more details have emerged linking the identities of binational Israelis to the assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai last month. The suspected 26-person hit team now includes three individuals using allegedly fake Australian passports, sparking outrage among Australians, whose international standing allows them to travel freely to many countries — even Iran — that are hostile to other Westerners. (more…)

Hezbollah vows to protect Lebanon from Israeli European passport holders

Hizbullah deputy chief Sheikh Naim Qassem: Europe has a responsibility to find a solution to the issue of Israeli European passport holders or else we will have to take precautions to protect our country.

After the assassination of a senior Hamas official in Dubai, Hezbollah issues an alert against disguised entry of terrorists into Lebanon. (more…)

Dubai identifies 15 more suspects in Hamas assassination

Police in Dubai have identified 15 more suspects in the killing last month of a senior member of the Palestinian Islamist militant group, Hamas. The accusations Wednesday give the names and passports of the suspects in the Jan. 19 killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. The latest suspects include 10 men and five women traveling on British, Irish, French and Australian passports. (more…)

Hamas official accused of helping Mossad hit squad

A key security operative of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas was under arrest in Syria tonight on suspicion of having helped an alleged Israeli hit squad identify Mahmoud al-Mabhouh before he was assassinated in Dubai, the Guardian has learned.
Palestinian sources in the Gulf confirmed Nahro Massoud, a Hamas security official, was in detention and under interrogation in Damascus in connection with the 19 January killing, which is now widely assumed to have been mounted by Israel’s Mossad secret intelligence service.
Khaled Mishal, Hamas’s political leader, denied the allegation. “It is not correct at all,” he said, as Hamas sources suggested a disinformation campaign by the group’s Fatah rival. But informed Palestinian sources insisted Massoud was being questioned amid mounting speculation that potentially senior Palestinian defectors may have assisted in the plot. guardian.uk

6 of hit squad suspected of killing Hamas man ‘had UK passports’

Six members of an 11-strong hit squad suspected of killing a senior Hamas military commander in Dubai entered the country using British passports, police said last night.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 49, was killed on 20 January in his hotel room, hours after arriving in the state. Last month Hamas claimed Israeli agents assassinated Mabhouh, who was wanted for the killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989.
Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai’s chief of police, said yesterday that 11 people, including one woman, were wanted over the killing. He said all suspects had European passports. In addition to the six British passport holders, three were carrying Irish passports and the two others were from France and Germany, Tamim said. guardian.co.uk / Telegraph.uk

Suspects wanted in connection with the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, clockwise from top left : Michael Lawrence Barney, James Leonard Clarke, Stephen Daniel Hodes, Paul John Keeley, Melvyn Adam Mildiner Photo: AP

Update: Passports fake, say UK and Ireland
The British and Irish governments have said that passports belonging to the alleged killers of a top Hamas official are fake.
Ireland said the names Gail Folliard, Evan Dennings and Kevin Daveron, and their passport numbers, did not match anything issued by its officials.
Britain said it believed six British passports were also fakes. BBC
In Dubai Tamim told reporters that security camera video obtained by his investigators showed the team at work in Dubai in the hours leading up to the assassination in a luxury hotel last month.
On Tuesday, a newspaper Web site in Dubai published the video released by the authorities, which appears to show the suspects following the Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Dubai may issue arrest warrant for Israeli PM over Hamas murder

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, will be at the top of Dubai’s wanted list if the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad is proven to be behind the killing of a senior Hamas official, the Dubai Police chief said yesterday.
Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim told The National that “Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will be the first to be wanted for justice as he would have been the one who signed the decision to kill [Mahmoud] al Mabhouh in Dubai. We will issue an arrest warrant against him.”
He did not, however, assert that Mossad was definitively responsible for the killing; Hamas has accused the Israeli agency of killing Mr al Mabhouh. National