In Global Hunt for Hit Men, Tantalizing Trail Goes Cold

Chip Cummins/Allistair McDonalds
Wall Street Journal
08 October '10

DUBAI—Soon after the January assassination of a top Palestinian official here, Dubai police stumbled onto what looked like a big break in the case.

They linked a white-haired man with glasses to several suspects caught on security cameras preparing for the murder. Most of the suspects in the case had carried forged passports, but this man had a real British one. It identified him as 62-year-old Christopher Lockwood.

A cellphone linked to him had recently been switched on in France. U.K. authorities found his London address. They also discovered that in 1994, he had changed his name from Yehuda Lustig. Mr. Lustig, they determined, was born in Scotland to a Jewish couple from what was then British-controlled Palestine.

The findings raised hopes of nabbing one of the orchestrators of the hit, possibly providing proof for accusations by Dubai police that Israel's intelligence agency Mossad was behind it.

But just as quickly, the trail went cold, a Wall Street Journal examination of the case shows.

(Read full story)

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'Snarky' Dubai Top Cop Losing Luster With Media

Honest Reporting/Backspin
09 March '10

CNN's Paula Hancocks says Dubai's deliberately setting up a "drip feed" of info on the assassination to keep the MSM spotlight on Israel:

The drip feed of information from Dubai’s police chief has kept the assassination of a Hamas leader in his Dubai hotel room on the front pages for about a month and a half.

Every day, without fail, the newspapers in the United Arab Emirates reserve part of the front page for an update, an opinion – even the tiniest hint of fresh information.

This is likely the intention of Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan. By releasing a tidbit here and there, the story stays alive and the international spotlight stays on Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad, which Khalfan says he is 100 percent sure is behind the hit.

In the long run, CNN adds, this "drip feed" only benefits the Mossad mystique.

So why is Dubai's top cop doing this? A few days ago, I argued that the Gulf state's ruling elites are more interested in drawing the world's attention away from its debt crisis. And videos linked to Mossad conspiracies real or imagined are the mother of all distractions.

(Read full post)
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Dubai's Mossad Videos: The Mother of All Distractions

Honest Reporting/Backspin
03 March '10

Is Dubai’s police chief playing the media like a fiddle? I don’t rule it out after reading this NY Times snippet:

For the moment, Dubai’s aggressive response has interrupted the steady stream of negative news coverage about the city’s continuing struggles with debt, and — perhaps not coincidentally — shifted attention to its crime-fighting prowess. That may partly reflect the priorities of Mr. Tamim, who has strong ties to the city’s ruler and enjoys greater latitude than almost any other public official here.

(Read full post)
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Dubai Killing: Curiouser and curiouser

Clarice Feldman
The American Thinker
02 March '10

(It would seem from the Reuters account that he made friends wherever he traveled. This could serve as a case of true "Middle East Peace" cooperation. Y.)

Over the past few days the number of suspects in the Dubai assassination of an Hamas murderer has jumped to 27, two of whom the Dubai authorities traced to an escape to Iran. Dubai officials are now quoted as having offered up at least four different accounts and contradictory accounts of the means of the assassination adding to the notion that this is looking more like Murder on the Orient Express than some streamlined "Mossad" operation as they first claimed.

Adding to the murky nature of all this, Reuters reports:

"Hamas suspects the security forces of an Arab state were behind the assassination of a senior group operative in Dubai earlier this year, the Al-Quds Al-Araby daily reported on Tuesday. Mahmoud Nasser, a member of Hamas' political bureau, told the newspaper that slain commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was likely being tracked by agents from Jordan and Egypt prior to the January 19 killing."

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An Intelligence Agency Misused Passports: OMG!

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
02 March '10

The complaints leveled against Israel by European countries and Australia, regarding the alleged misuse of passports by the Mossad in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, ring hollow and smack of blatant hypocrisy. Whoever did kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh—whether it was the Israeli Mossad or someone else—clearly did have their agents use stolen or forged passports. Big deal.

Every good intelligence agency uses stolen and forged passports. The British have been especially adept at this means of spycraft. No country that uses fake passports in their intelligence operations has the moral authority to complain about the alleged misuse of passports in this case. The only ones that have a legitimate grievance are those individuals whose passports may have been misused without their knowledge.

I guess it’s the job of foreign ministries to complain publicly when other nations do what they themselves do secretly. Hypocrisy is, after all, the homage that vice pays to virtue. I’m reminded of the famous scene in Casablanca, when officer Renault declares, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!” A croupier then approaches Renault, and hands him a roll of currency: “Your winnings, sir.”

The hypocrisy in this case seems even more blatant than usual. Is it because Israel is the alleged offender, and the world has gotten accustomed to singling out Israel for double standard condemnation?

(Read full article)
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The Real Security Lapse in Dubai

Letting terrorists conduct business.


Daniel Halper
The Weekly Standard
01 March '10

The Times of London reports that police in Dubai are in a tizzy, six weeks after the killing of Hamas's Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a hotel in downtown Dubai. A major security breach, an extrajudicial murder--it's being called all sorts of unsavory things. And police say they're certain that Mabhouh was killed by the Israeli Mossad, but don't provide hard evidence. Who exactly killed Mabhouh (aside from how they killed him, which the videos do a pretty good job showing) might not ever be known.

Dubai police are quick to blame everyone but themselves for security lapses.

(Read full post)
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Spinning the death of a terrorist

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
28 February '10

The media continue to give prominent coverage to the investigation of the death of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, whose body was found some six weeks ago in a Dubai luxury hotel. Dubai's police authorities have boasted that it took them just 24 hours to come close to solving the case, and their ostensible professionalism and efficiency have been widely praised after the release of extensive CCTV footage that supposedly shows various teams involved in al-Mabhouh's assassination.

However, it seems that few in the media have been willing to notice what was rightly highlighted in a report by Global Post correspondent Tom Hundley, who pointed out that Dubai "has become a kind of Arabian Big Easy where a senior operative in a powerful political organization can be assassinated in a five-star hotel - and the crime will be hushed up for more than a week while the powers-that-be decide how the story will be spun."

Indeed, it is definitely noteworthy that almost ten days elapsed before Mabhouh's assassination was announced by the UAE government's official press agency, which reported on the day of his funeral that he had been killed by an "experienced criminal gang."

(Read full post)

Related: Video Killer Thriller In Dubai
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