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 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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Hitting the wrong target

Sarah Honig
Sidney Morning Herald
28 February '10

The false-passport row denies Israel's right to act against those trying to destroy it.

FOR average Israelis, members of the silent majority (as distinct from the country's chattering cliquey elite), the false-passports brouhaha abroad is just another sideshow in the international community's theatre of the absurd. In this global burlesque, everything can be turned upside down. The lie is granted equal standing with truth, and flagrant canards frequently gain the ascendancy and are paraded as fact. Values are devalued. Good and evil are interchangeable. Anything goes.

In this environment of intellectual anarchy, Israel's existential struggle stands no chance of being granted anything vaguely resembling a fair hearing.

The case of terror kingpin Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is instructive. After his body was discovered in a Dubai hotel, his own son, Abdel-Rauf, bragged on TV that the late lamented ''fought the Jews, hit the Jews, kidnapped and killed Israelis. He outfitted and dispatched suicide-bombers.'' That evidently made him an object for admiration. Killing Jews is a noble objective, one to take pride in, to revere.

Mabhouh co-founded the Hamas military wing and Hamas declared war on Israel. He was a self-confessed murderer. Last year he boasted on al-Jazeera about his personal culpability in the separate 1989 kidnap-murders of Israeli soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Sa'adon. He crowed about smuggling into Gaza thousands of Iranian-made missiles for the sole purpose of making the lives of Israeli civilians hellish in the country's heartland, including Tel Aviv.

So when Israelis point to Mabhouh's gory record, it isn't just their biased say-so. It's hardly an unsubstantiated assertion, an excuse to justify assassination. Accustomed and resigned as Israelis are to the world's double standards, they nevertheless watch with renewed amazement as Mabhouh's suspected killers are placed on Interpol's wanted list, where Mabhouh himself never appeared - soaked with blood as his hands were. Has anyone, incidentally, bothered inquiring which passport Mabhouh was travelling under and why he was allowed to enter Dubai on a gun-running mission?

(Read full story)
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Video Killer Thriller In Dubai

The UAE has video of likely assassins. Where's the rest of its film collection?


Claudia Rosett
Forbes.com
25 February '10

(She gets the award for asking the question that everyone else managed to avoid. Y.)

For starters, where's the full surveillance footage of al-Mabhouh himself? He was a killer from way back; a founding member of Hamas's violent Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, who bragged about his role in the 1989 kidnapping and murder of two Israeli soldiers. The Wall Street Journal, among others, reports that al-Mabhouh at the time of his death "was a key link in smuggling operations ferrying Iranian weapons to Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip." He reportedly arrived in Dubai last month from Damascus, which serves as a haven of hospitality for Hamas' top terrorists. Dubai authorities say he was traveling on a false passport, but apparently they have been able to piece together enough of his trail to inform the press that just before he was murdered, he "met with members of his group and bought a pair of shoes."

Please, tell us more--or better yet, show us any accompanying video clips. In whose blood was al-Mabhouh planning to dip those new shoes? Who, exactly, did he meet in Dubai? What for? Did he do any banking in Dubai? How often had he visited before? In recent years have Dubai authorities perchance stored away enough video of al Mabhouh and his terrorist comrades for a full-length feature film? Queried about these matters, the U.A.E. embassy in Washington referred me to the Dubai Police, who did not respond to phone calls or emailed questions.

Clearly this is a complex scene. The U.A.E. tries to walk a line between dealing with Iran and its affiliates and cooperating with the U.S. On its Washington embassy Web site, the U.A.E. states that its support for the U.S. includes the hosting of more than 2,000 U.S. military personnel and the contribution of 250 special forces soldiers to the coalition in Afghanistan. Last August Dubai blew the whistle on a shipment of North Korean arms that made a stopover in their waters, en route to Iran. And U.S. authorities in recent times have credited the U.A.E. with starting to crack down on terrorist finance networks.

(Read full story)
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Dershowitz on the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh Killing

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
24 February '10

As Alan Dershowitz is wont to do, he takes a lawyerly look at whether the killing of Hamas military leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel room was legally and morally justified. He assumes, for the sake of argument, of course, that Mossad “did make the hit.” On the legal side, he notes that there are certainly extrajudicial killings that are not unlawful. “Every soldier who kills an enemy combatant engages in an extrajudicial killing, as does every policeman who shoots a fleeing felon.” After some analysis, he concludes: “This was not an ordinary murder. It was carried out as a matter of state policy as part of an ongoing war. … Obviously it would have been better if he could have been captured and subjected to judicial justice. But it was impossible to capture him, especially when he was in Dubai.” Well, the “obviously” is debatable, but his conclusion is sound.

Once Dershowitz considers the moral equation, the fun starts. He’s Dershowitz, after all, so he goes at it:

The Goldstone Report ordered by the UN Human Rights Council suggests that Israel cannot lawfully fight Hamas rockets by wholesale air attacks. Richard Goldstone, in interviews, has suggested that Israel should protect itself from these unlawful attacks by more proportionate retail measures, such as commando raids and targeted killing of terrorists.

Well, there could be no better example of a proportionate and focused attack on a combatant who was deeply involved in the rocket attacks on Israel, than the killing of Mabhouh. Not only was he the commander in charge of Hamas’ unlawful military actions, he was also personally responsible for the kidnapping and murder of two Israeli soldiers several years earlier.

It’s hard not to see the unalloyed benefit in the surgical assassination of Mabhouh, unless, of course, the applicable moral rule in these situations is that Israel is never entitled to defend itself.

(Read full post)
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More Like This Please

Michael J. Totten
Contentions/Commentary
23 February '10

I can understand why Dubai authorities aren’t happy about the killing of Hamas senior military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, presumably by Israeli Mossad agents, in one of the city-state’s hotel rooms last month. More than most countries in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates has stayed out of the Arab-Israeli conflict and would rather it not wash up on the beach.

Even as European Union officials perfunctorily squawk about the use of forged passports by the assassins, few others have grounds to complain. Al-Mabhouh was a terrorist commander on a mission to acquire Iranian weapons for use against civilians. He was a combatant. Unlike his victims, he was fair game. He would have been fair game for even an air strike if he were in Gaza. As he was, instead, in Dubai, he was taken out quietly without even alerting, let alone harming, any of the civilians around him.

If only Israel could fight all its battles this way. It would be the cleanest and least-deadly war in the history of warfare. Even some of Israel’s harshest critics should understand that.

“The Goldstone Report,” Alan Dershowitz wrote in the Jerusalem Post, “suggests that Israel cannot lawfully fight Hamas rockets by wholesale air attacks. Richard Goldstone, in his interviews, has suggested that Israel should protect itself from these unlawful attacks by more proportionate measures, such as commando raids and targeted killing of terrorists engaged in the firing of rockets. Well, there could be no better example of a proportionate and focused attack on a combatant deeply involved in the rocket attacks on Israel than the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.”

(Read full post)
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What Was He Doing In Dubai?

Rachel Abrams
The Weekly Standard
22 February '10

The Dubai police have exposed the “identities” of the people who did it—pointing the finger not only at the Mossad, but also at Palestinian “collaborators” (who may be traitorous members of Hamas, or Hamas-despising members of Fatah, depending on which fork of the tongue you care to believe, if you care to believe either at all). The Arab world is aghast in public, though we may presume that at any rate the King of Jordan and the dictator of Egypt, who apparently have their own reasons, are singing a different tune entirely in private. One Hamas “legislator” is suggesting the victim brought it on himself by sloppiness.

The Brits and the Irish have called in Israeli ambassadors to “inquire” about the use of purloined British/Irish identities, the EU is atwitter about it, the Germans are investigating a possibly stolen German identity, and David Miliband, after expressing his “outrage,” has met with Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman to discuss it. (And by the bye, the awesomely illustrious French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, takes the opportunity to observe that this whole affair "shows the need for peace and a Palestinian state, immediately!”) The Israelis are neither confirming nor denying having carried out the operation during which a notorious self-proclaimed Hamas murderer of unarmed Israeli soldiers was assassinated in his hotel room bed.

(Read full post)
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The bottom line on the Dubai hit, Israel, the Mossad etc.

Stephanie Gutmann
Telegraph.uk.com
20 February '10

Tom Gross has excellent stuff on reasons other nations may have been involved in the hit and also photographs of children killed by rockets that Israel believes Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the object of the hit, helped smuggle into Gaza.

Then over to Martin Solomon of Solomonia for the bottom line:

Let’s leave that aside for the moment and assume Israel’s responsibility. Apparently some people believe this is a bad thing, in spite of the fact that Mahbhouh was an active operative for a declared enemy. This is a guy who certainly deserved death. Dubai should be embarrassed that this guy was in their country [allegedly] doing arms deals far more than Israel should be embarrassed for bumping him off.

Isn’t this exactly the type of activity people like Goldstone and others are always calling for?

(Read full article)
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‘Dam butlab dam’ – only for some

Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
19 February '10

Terrorist arms smuggler Mahmoud al-Mabhouh’s son, Abdel-Rauf, stood teary-eyed before TV interviewers and lavished praise on his deceased father. He bragged that the late lamented, who was discovered dead in Dubai, “fought the Jews, hit the Jews, kidnapped and killed Israelis. He outfitted and dispatched suicide bombers.” That evidently made him an object for admiration, a source of honor and a claim to fame. Killing Jews is a noble objective, one to take pride in, to revere.

So when we Israelis point to Mabhouh’s gory record, it isn’t just our biased say-so. It’s hardly an unsubstantiated allegation, a pretext to justify assassination. His own son concedes this, indeed he crows about it as the paramount tribute he can pay his father.

And it isn’t a mournful son’s subjective or self-serving aggrandizement either. Hamas issued an official statement celebrating its latest shahid (martyr). Prominent in the Hamas-compiled catalog of Mabhouh glories are the 1989 abduction-murders of IDF soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Sa’adon.

By the boastful admission of both his kin and organization, Mabhouh’s hands were bloodstained. Hence, by the Arabs’ own rules of engagement, he was liable for reprisal. The principal code governing these rules is dam butlab dam (blood begets blood).

Because of this core premise Hamas now vows to wreak the most horrific vengeance on Israel, actual proof of Israeli culpability for Mabhouh’s demise being entirely immaterial. All Israelis are therefore fair game. This is the elementary protocol of the blood feud.

But here’s where we encounter our enemies’ cynical lopsided logic. By their own rules – assuming for argument’s sake that we submit ourselves to them – we should be perceived just as entitled as they to hunt down and kill whoever killed our own. Yet our retribution is condemned a priori as illegitimate. The right to avenge Mabhouh’s death is unchallenged, whereas the right to avenge Mabhouh’s victims is categorically denied. What is valid, in fact a sacred duty for one side, is intolerable and entirely villainous for the other.

(Read full article)
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Analysis: Long-term fallout with UK from Dubai hit unlikely

Jonathan Spyer
International/JPost
18 February '10

The evidence suggesting that British passports were used by members of the team responsible for killing Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is causing concern at the possibility of a new diplomatic row between Israel and the UK. Such a row would come at a time of already strained relations between the two countries, because of the failure of the British government to take firm action to end the possibility of the arrest of Israeli officials in Britain on suspicion of ‘war crimes.’

Prime Minister Gordon Brown pledged to carry out a full investigation into the affair. A British Foreign Office Spokesman quoted earlier in the London Daily Telegraph earlier this week said that the authorities “believe the passports used were fraudulent and have begun our own investigation.” If the killers of Mabhouh were indeed Israelis, the unauthorized use of foreign passports will come as no surprise. It has been a much noted aspect in the known operations of Israel’s external intelligence services in recent years.

The two men apprehended following the failed attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Amman in 1997, for example, were found to be carrying forged Canadian passports. A diplomatic row also erupted between Israel and New Zealand in 2004, after two Israeli citizens were convicted of passport fraud in Auckland. The case resulted in the suspension of top-level contacts between the two countries for a short period of time. Israel is understood to have offered guarantees to the authorities of both countries that their documents would not be used in future operations.

Some reports in the British media have raised additional questions over the future of British-Israeli intelligence sharing in light of the latest incident.

The British and Israeli intelligence services are thought to cooperate closely in a variety of areas of common interest – including on the Iranian nuclear program, and in the fight against Sunni ‘Global Jihad’ organizations. The warnings of major diplomatic fallout are probably overblown.

(Read full article)

Related:Scandal over Mossad use of UK passports curiously fails to materialise with Britons awe struck at Israeli daring
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If Israel killed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, Did It Have the Right To?

Alan M. Dershowitz
Hudson New York
18 February '10

I don’t know whether Israel did or did not assassinate the leader of the Hamas military wing, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. But assuming for argument’s sake that the Mossad made the hit, did it have the right to engage in this “extrajudicial assassination?”

Not all extrajudicial killings are unlawful. Every soldier who kills an enemy combatant engages in an extrajudicial killing, as does every policeman who shoots a fleeing felon. There are several complex legal questions involved in assessing these situations.

First, was the person who was killed a combatant, in relation to those killed him? If Israel killed Mabhouh, there can be absolutely no doubt that he was a combatant. He was actively participating in an ongoing war by Hamas against Israeli civilians. Indeed, it is likely that he was killed while on a military mission to Iran in order to secure unlawful, anti-personnel rockets that target Israeli civilians. Both the United States and Great Britain routinely killed such combatants during the Second World War, whether they were in uniform or not. Moreover, Hamas combatants deliberately remove their uniforms while engaged in combat.

So if the Israeli Air Force had killed Mabhouh while he was in Gaza, there would be absolutely no doubt that their action would be lawful. It does not violate international law to kill a combatant, regardless of where the combatant is found, whether he is awake or asleep and whether or not he is engaged in active combat at the moment of his demise.

But Mabhouh was not killed in Gaza. He was killed in Dubai. It is against the law of Dubai for an Israeli agent to kill a combatant against Israel while he is in Dubai. So the people who engaged in the killing presumptively violated the domestic law of Dubai, unless there is a defense to such a killing based on international principles regarding enemy combatants. It is unlikely that any defense would be available to an Israeli or someone working on behalf of Israel, since Dubai does not recognize Israel’s right to kill enemy combatants on its territory.

(Read full article)

Related:Mahmoud al-Mabhouh: To Kill a Terrorist - Exclusive Analysis
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Mossad? Well, I Certainly Hope So.

Yaacov Lozowick
Yaacov Lozowick's Ruminations
17 February '10

Here's a story I heard long ago, as a graduate student. A famous historian approaches the archivist at the Public Record Office (that's what they used to call the British National Archives) and asks to see some files about MI5 or was it MI6?. The scandalized archivist glares at him, and says that MI5 is a fictitious agency, it doesn't really exist and certainly has no documents in the PRO. Ah, says the professor, That's interesting. You see, I've got this document from the American National Archives in Washington, in which the OSS (the predecessor of the CIA) is corresponding with MI5 or was it MI6?, and I thought I'd like to see the full context from the British perspective, too.

In the meantime the Brits have fessed up that there actually is an MI5 (and also an MI6). If you think we now know all about their escapades, well, I certainly hope not.


(How this played out on Dubai TV news. Yosef)


Lots of media outlets are all in a tizzy this week about the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh recently in a hotel room in Dubai (Times, Guardian, BBC, NYT). Haaretz is in the same tizzy, with two opposing op-eds this morning.

(Read full post)

Related: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh: To Kill a Terrorist - Exclusive Analysis
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Hamas is Threatening Who?

Tariq Alhomayed
Asharq Al-Awsat
01 February '10

Following the assassination of Qassam Brigades leading figure Mahmoud al Mabhouh in his [hotel] room in Dubai, the leaders of Hamas came out threatening and promising to avenge his death. This is understandable and only expected due to the nature of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; however what was not clear was whether Hamas was threatening revenge on Israel or was threatening to violate the land of Arab countries.

Some Hamas leaders began to remind us of the history of the intelligence war between the Palestinian Liberation Organization [PLO] and Israel in the past and it seems that for the first time Hamas is acknowledging the PLO’s struggle and what it did for the Palestinian cause, as Hamas mentioned conflicts that took place in Cyprus for example. Mahmoud Zahar, a leading Hamas figure, went further than that when he openly threatened that “we send a clear message to the Arab countries with ties to the Zionist side to learn from the lesson of this crime that was committed.”

He added, (and this is the crux of the matter), “Today, the incident has been repeated in the UAE, and I believe that the UAE and other [states] must realize that the Zionist side does not respect the sovereignty of any Arab country nor of any state in the world, and that its own interest takes precedence over all interests of nations. [In this regard] there must be reconsideration of ties between the Zionist enemy and the states and [there must be] evaluation [of ties] in light of the crimes committed by the occupying state against the Palestinian people.”

The first mistake is that the UAE does not have ties with the “Zionist side” to use Zahar’s terms. Is Hamas trying to say that Mossad agents are moving around freely in UAE territory for example and that this is known to the authorities there? If Mahmoud al Mabhouh himself – the Hamas commander who was assassinated in Dubai and who was assigned the task of liaising between Hamas and Iran – entered the UAE from Damascus on what was said to be an Iraqi passport (but that is another story altogether) and using a different name, and the UAE authorities did not know at the time that he was a leading figure of the Qassam Brigades or that he was wanted by Mossad for 20 years, then how would the UAE security authorities or others know whether or not those coming to the UAE are agents of Mossad or other apparatus?

(Read full article)
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