Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Mahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh (محمود عبد الرؤوف المبحوح; 14 February 1960 – 19 January 2010) was a senior Hamas military commander and one of the founders of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, the military affiliate of Hamas. Police in the UAE, where al-Mabhouh was killed, believe that al-Mabhouh's killing was carried out by Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.

As an al-Qassam Brigades operative, Al-Mabhouh was involved in several armed actions targeting Israel, including the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989. In more recent years, al-Mabhouh had assumed an important role procuring weapons for the al-Qassam Brigades. In 2010, journalists Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv alleged that Mabhouh had played a key role in forging secret connections between the Hamas government in Gaza and the Al-Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran. Al-Mabhouh was killed in the five-star Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai on 19 January 2010, having arrived in the country earlier that day from Syria under an alias and using one of several passports. The Dubai police state that al-Mabhouh was drugged and then suffocated with a pillow. Widespread speculation, which Dubai police allegations support, is that he was killed by Israeli Mossad assassins. Allegations that the assassins used fraudulently obtained passports from several countries led to the arrests and expulsions of Israeli officials in several European countries and Australia.

Biography
Al-Mabhouh was born in Jabalia Camp, Gaza Strip, on 14 February 1960. As a young man, he pursued weightlifting. He quit secondary school, trained as a car mechanic and later became a garage owner. Mabhouh had 13 siblings, and was a married father of four.

In the 1970s, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, and in the 1980s, he was reported to have been involved in sabotaging coffee shops where gambling was taking place. In 1986, the Israeli security forces arrested him for possession of an assault rifle. It has been reported that after his release, he became involved with Hamas.

According to a Hamas statement, Mabhouh was involved in the 1989 abduction and killing of the Israeli soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Sa'adon. In a video taped two weeks before his death and broadcast on Al Jazeera in early February 2010, Mabhouh admitted his involvement in this event, saying he had disguised himself as an Orthodox Jew. In May 1989, a failed attempt was made to arrest him for his involvement in the murder of the two Israeli soldiers and he subsequently left the Gaza Strip; his home in Gaza was demolished by Israel in 1989 as retribution for the attack.

According to a report in The Palestine Chronicle, al-Mabhouh had survived two assassination attempts; the first was a car bombing; the second took place in Beirut in 2009 and involved the use of poison which rendered him unconscious for 30 hours.

Al-Mabhouh was believed by Israel to have been involved in smuggling weapons and explosives into Gaza. He spent most of 2003 in an Egyptian jail. At the time of his death, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was wanted by the Israeli, Egyptian and Jordanian governments, and living in Syria.

Just before his killing, Mabhouh was alleged to have played a key role in forging secret connections between the Hamas government in Gaza and the Al-Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards in Iran.

Death
On 19 January 2010, Mabhouh was killed in his room in a hotel in Dubai. He had been followed by at least 11 individuals suspected of being Mossad agents, who were carrying fake or fraudulently obtained passports from various Western nations, seven of which assumed the names of Israeli dual citizens. Reports indicated that al-Mabhouh was tracked by his killers from Damascus to Dubai. He was travelling without bodyguards, and was en route to Bangkok. Although it was reported that he carried five passports under different names, Hamas officials in Syria reportedly stated that at this time he was using one issued in his own name.

He checked into the Al Bustan Rotana hotel on the afternoon of 19 January. He left the hotel about an hour after check-in, and there were conflicting reports as to what he did during the few hours before he was killed. At approximately 8:25 p.m. Al-Mabhouh went back to his room. He failed to answer a call from his wife a half hour later.

According to Dubai Police Force, he was dead by 9 p.m. that evening. On 20 January, the following day, his body was found in his hotel room. The door was locked from the inside. Mabhouh's body was transported to Damascus for burial.

Hotel surveillance footage released to the public shows the suspects, who had arrived on separate flights, meeting in the hotel. While the suspects used personal communication devices among themselves to avoid surveillance, a number of telephone calls were made to a number in Austria. When Mabhouh arrived around 3pm, two of the suspects followed him to his room. They then checked into the room opposite Mabhouh's. At 8 pm Mabhouh left the hotel and while several of the suspects kept watch, two tried to gain entry to his room, but were disturbed when a tourist exited the nearby elevator. While another suspect distracted the tourist, four suspects allegedly entered the victim’s hotel room using an electronic device, and waited for him to return. Hotel computer logs indicated that an attempt was made to reprogram Mabhouh’s electronic door lock at this time.

Cause of death
Initially, Dubai authorities believed Mabhouh had died of natural causes. Results from a preliminary forensic report by the Dubai police found that al-Mabhouh was first paralyzed by an injection of succinylcholine (suxamethonium), a fast-acting muscle relaxant. He was then suffocated with a pillow, though their investigation and final report on the matter would not be ready until the beginning of March. Signs indicated that al-Mabhouh attempted to resist as he was being suffocated. The hyper-relaxation mode induced by this drug applies only to muscles – the victim remains conscious. Dubai authorities stated they were ruling the death a homicide and were working with the International Criminal Police Organization to investigate the incident.

Suspects
Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Lt. Gen. and Dubai's police chief, announced on 18 February 2010 that, "Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of al-Mabhouh ... It is 99% if not 100% that Mossad is standing behind the murder." Dubai police said the killers spent little time in the emirate, arriving less than a day before the murder, killing al-Mabhouh between his arrival at 3:15 p.m. and 9 p.m. that night, and leaving the country before the discovery of the murder.

The Israeli government initially did not comment on claims that it was involved in Mabhouh's death. On 17 February, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman refused to confirm or deny any Israeli involvement, citing Israel's "policy of ambiguity" on such matters, and claimed a lack of solid evidence for Israeli involvement. Lieberman even declared that the press "watch too many James Bond movies". Later the Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, said "there is nothing linking Israel to the assassination." However, Israeli media and public opinion have generally accepted Mossad's responsibility for the operation.

The identities used by eleven of the suspects have been publicly identified, based on passports that the Dubai police said were not forgeries, though both the British and Irish governments said the passports bearing their countries' names were "either fraudulently obtained or [are] outright fakes." The total number of suspects stands at eighteen, all of whom entered the country using fake or fraudulently obtained passports. Passports used by the assassins were from the United Kingdom (6), Republic of Ireland (5), Australia (3), France (1 – suspected of being the hit squad leader and logistical coordinator), and Germany (1).

The names used on the six UK passports and the German passport belong to individuals who live in Israel and hold dual citizenships.

The photographs of 11 of the suspected assassins were added to Interpol's most wanted list on 18 February, with a note specifying that they had been published since the identities adopted by the suspects were faked. Dubai airport officials carried out routine retinal scans on 11 of the suspects sought in the assassination when they entered the country and Dubai police said they would publish the scans through Interpol.

Two Palestinians, Ahmad Hasnin, an intelligence operative of the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority (PA), and Anwar Shekhaiber, an employee of the PA in Ramallah, were arrested in Jordan and handed over to Dubai, suspected of giving logistical assistance. Hamas said the two were former Fatah security officials who both worked at a construction company in Dubai owned by Mohammed Dahlan, another senior Fatah security official, and that they rented cars and hotel rooms for members of the Mossad hit team alleged to have carried out the killing. Dahlan and Fatah denied the charges. Recruitment of Ahmad Hasnin by the Mossad may have occurred while he was imprisoned by Israel for a month in June 2007 for his involvement with Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, Fatah's paramilitary wing. He came to the UAE in 2008, according to a family source.

On 19 February, Dubai police chief Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan called for Interpol to issue a "red notice" to approve the arrest of Israeli Mossad chief Meir Dagan, causing the Israeli government to deny he has enough proof.

Suspected Mossad Agent Arrested
In early June 2010, German prosecutors announced that at Germany's request Polish authorities had arrested a suspected Mossad agent thought to have played a role in the Dubai assassination of a Hamas commander.

"He was arrested in Warsaw and is suspected of being involved in illegally obtaining a [German] passport," a spokesman for German federal prosecution said, confirming a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel.

Western government reactions
In the wake of the revelation that passports of British citizens had figured prominently in the operation, the United Kingdom's Serious Organised Crime Agency launched its own investigation into the matter. The British Foreign Office also summoned the Israeli ambassador on February 18 to share information on the matter. The Daily Mail cited a previously reliable "British security source" as stating that Mossad had tipped off the UK that their passports would be used for an operation, but this was denied by the UK government.

Britain's Foreign Office believes that the passports used were fraudulent; one report indicated that they had issued the passports in January 2010, the only difference between the actual identities being the photographs.

Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs declared that eight supposedly Irish passports used by the suspects were forged. On 15 June, following an extensive investigation, the Department of Foreign Affairs came to "the inescapable conclusion that an Israeli government agency was responsible for the misuse and, most likely, the manufacture of the forged Irish passports associated with the murder of Mr. Mabhouh." The government's immediate diplomatic reaction was that "Israel be requested to withdraw a designated member of staff of its Embassy in Dublin."

According to a spokesman of the French Foreign Affairs ministry, the French passport was counterfeit. The Israeli chargé d'affaires in Paris was summoned on 18 February and the French Foreign Ministry issued a statement expressing, "deep concern about the malicious and fraudulent use of these French administrative documents."

German officials said that the passport number which they received from the authorities in Dubai is either incomplete or does not exist. In June 2010, Polish authorities arrested a suspect in connection with the case. Germany has sought his extradition over the alleged misuse of its passports.

After learning of the alleged use of Australian passports by Mossad, the Australian Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, publicly summoned the Israeli ambassador to Australia, Yuval Rotem. Smith told the ambassador that if Israel was responsible for the passport forgeries that "Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend." Soon after this occurred, Australia, who is usually a strong supporter of Israel at the United Nations, abstained on a UN motion to investigate Israeli war crimes committed during the Gaza War, a motion that Australia had previously opposed. In the Australian press there was widespread speculation that the move was retaliation for the passport affair.

Australian and British investigators came to Israel to investigate the case. In May 2010, after receiving the final results of the investigation, foreign minister, Stephen Smith told Federal Parliament that the Australian government was in no doubt that Israel was responsible for the abuse and counterfeiting of [Australian] passports. Australia ceased co-operation with Israeli intelligence and expelled Israeli diplomat Eli Elkoubi. In June, the Canberra Times revealed that Elkoubi was an officer of Mossad leading Israeli diplomats to complain that the disclosure was a further act of retaliation.

The U.S. refused to cooperate with investigation
After al-Mabhouh's death the United Arab Emirates requested that the U.S. assist it in tracking down "cardholder details and related information for credit cards reportedly issued by a U.S. bank to several suspects." The U.S. denied receiving the request. A cable sent from the U.S. consulate in Dubai, released by Wikileaks, however, showed that the U.S. declined the UAE request.