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Mysterious death in Dubai turns spotlight on Mossad
JASON KOUTSOUKIS, JERUSALEM
February 6, 2010



In his office, Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal has a mural depicting the faces of 20 Hamas leaders fighters and bomb-makers who were assassinated. Photo: Paul McGeough

MAHMOUD al-Mabhouh arrived in Dubai on an Emirates flight from Syria at 3pm on January 19.

According to Dubai's police chief, Lieutenant-General Dahi Khalfan al-Tamim, the 49-year-old gunrunner for Hamas checked into his room at the al-Bustan Rotana Hotel under an assumed name about 4pm. After depositing some documents in the hotel safe, Mabhouh went out for dinner, arriving back at his room by 9pm.

Soon after, police believe, the security-conscious Mabhouh, who routinely blocked the doors to his hotel rooms with heavy furniture, opened his door to a woman. Hours later he was dead, believed poisoned by a mystery drug that at first led investigators to believe he had suffered a heart attack.

Dubai police believe that the suspects, at least seven people carrying European passports, were out of the country before his body was discovered by hotel staff at noon on January 20.

At first, Hamas officials in Damascus went so far as to put out a statement saying Mabhouh had died of natural causes. Nearly 10 days later, autopsy results from France suggested otherwise.

Mabhouh's death had many of the hallmarks of an assassination by Israel's external intelligence agency, Mossad.

In 1989, Mabhouh was part of a team of militants who kidnapped and murdered two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, stationed in the occupied Gaza Strip. Israel either killed or arrested most of those believed responsible, but Mabhouh got away.

Eventually arriving in Damascus, he rose through Hamas ranks to become the movement's liaison with its main weapons supplier, Iran.

Mabhouh may have become a higher-priority target for Israel in November, when the country's military intelligence chief, Major-General Amos Yadlin, told MPs that Hamas had test-fired a rocket with a range of 60 kilometres, which he said had been supplied by Iran. This put Tel Aviv within striking distance of the Gaza Strip.

At Mabhouh's funeral in Damascus, Hamas leader Khalid Meshaal vowed revenge against Israel.

In September 1997, Meshaal was the target of a bungled Mossad assassination attempt in the Jordanian capital, Amman, that bears some resemblance to Mabhouh's murder.

Meshaal was getting out of his car when a man posing as a Canadian tourist squirted something into his ear.

Hours later, doctors realised that Meshaal had been injected with a painkiller that was shutting down his respiratory system. Luckily for him, his bodyguard had caught one of the attackers, and Jordan's King Hussein was able to pressure prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu - the same man who leads Israel today - to hand over an antidote.

''The one part of this story that suggests Israel had something to do with it is that Mabhouh was injected with something,'' said a former Israeli security operative.

Specifying that only his first name be used, Itamar - now the managing director of a security consultancy - said he could not confirm Israel's involvement. ''But the method is indicative. Very clean and quiet, and it enabled the team to exit the country well before the body was discovered.''

The parts of the story that didn't add up, Itamar said, were suggestions that Mabhouh had been tortured with an electrical device and then strangled. ''I don't think a highly trained Israeli team would bother with this, simply because it would take up too much time.''

So if not Israel, who? According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, many people in the Arab world wanted Mabhouh dead.

Whether or not Israel was involved, proving it will be near impossible.

''Dubai police say they have the identities of seven suspects,'' Itamar said. ''Why haven't they been released? They say they have hotel security footage of people entering Mabhouh's room. Why have we not seen it?

''The answer is because any information or photographs or security footage they have, it doesn't tell us anything.''
The work of Mossad?

■ Zuhair Mohsen Leader of al-Saiqa, a pro-Syrian faction of the PLO, shot on July 15, 1979, in Cannes, France.

■ Khalil al-Wazir (Abu Jihad) Leader of the PLO's Fatah faction shot in front of his family in Tunis in 1988.

■ Fathi Shikaki Founder of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad shot on October 26, 1995, outside a hotel in Sliema, Malta.

■ Imad Mughniyeh Liaison between Lebanon's Hezbollah movement and Iran killed in Damascus on February 12, 2008, when the driver's seat headrest of a car he entered exploded.

■ Mohammed Suleiman A close adviser to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, shot on August 1, 2008, on a beach near the Syrian city of Tartous. The shot was believed to have been fired from a yacht offshore.