Death
| (January 19, 2010) | |
| 2:29 am | Team leader arrives in Dubai |
| 3:25 pm | Mabhouh arrives at hotel |
| 3:51 pm | Team reserves opposite room |
| 4:23 pm | Mabhouh exits hotel |
| 8:24 pm | He comes back to hotel |
| (Mabhouh is killed) | |
| 8:46 pm | Team begins to leave hotel |
| (January 20) | |
| 1:30 pm | Body of Mabhouh discovered |
On 19 January 2010, al-Mabhouh was killed in his room in a hotel in Dubai, after being followed by 11 suspects of different nationalities. The Sunday Times reports that al-Mabhouh was tracked since January 19, 2010, on his 10:05 a.m. departure from Damascus, Syria to Dubai on Emirates Flight 912.[8] While it states that he traveled under a false passport,[8] Hamas and Dubai officials maintain that al-Mabhouh entered the country under his own identity[9] at 3:15 p.m.[10] Normally al-Mabhouh would have been protected by bodyguards, but their arrival was delayed because the plane was full.[11] Dubai’s police chief, Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan, stated that Mabhouh was transiting in Dubai before traveling to China. [12]
Al-Mabhouh took a taxi to the Al Bustan Rotana hotel and settled into room 230.[13] He had asked for a room with no balcony and sealed windows, so no one could enter other than through the door. He showered, changed, left documents in the safe, and then exited the hotel between 4:30 and 5 p.m, roughly an hour having passed since first checking in.[14] What he did during the next three to four hours is unclear. Dubai’s police chief said he did not meet anyone in the emirate. He just went shopping and returned to his hotel, where the crime took place. [12] Other reports said he went to Dubai's Iranian consulate for a meeting or that he met with "people from his own group".[15] At approximately 8:25 p.m. Al-Mabhouh came back to the room,[13] and subsequently failed to answer a call from his wife a half hour later.[14]
Hotel surveillance footage released to the public shows the suspects, who had arrived on separate flights, meeting in the hotel. While the suspects apparently used personal communication devices among themselves to avoid surveillance, a number of telephone calls were made to a number in Austria. When al-Mabhouh arrived around 3pm, two of the suspects dressed in tennis attire followed him. They then checked into the room opposite al-Mabhouh's. al-Mabhouh later 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 indicate that an attempt was made to reprogram al-Mabhouh’s electronic door lock at this time.[16]
According to Dubai police, he was dead by 9 p.m. that evening.[10] On January 20, the following day, his body was found in his hotel room.[8][17] After al-Mabhouh's death, his remains were subsequently moved to Damascus for burial.
Cause of death
Initially, Dubai authorities believed al-Mabhouh had died of natural causes.[18] Fawzi Benomran, the Dubai police coroner, said, "It was meant to look like death from natural causes during sleep." He described the determination of the exact cause of death as "one of the most challenging cases" his department has faced.[19]
Dubai police said that results from their preliminary forensic report found that al-Mabhouh was first paralyzed via electric shock and then suffocated, though their investigation and final report on the matter would not be ready until the beginning of March.[10] The Khaleej Times quoted an unnamed senior police official as saying that four masked assailants had shocked al-Mabhouh's legs before using a pillow to suffocate him.[20] Another story reported by Uzi Mahnaimi stated that a hit team killed al-Mabhouh with a heart-attack inducing drug, then proceeded to take photographs of his documents before leaving.[8]
Al-Mabhouh's family said that medical teams who examined his body determined that he died in his hotel room after being strangled and receiving a massive electric shock to the head. Blood samples sent to a French laboratory confirmed that he died from electrocution.[17] Dubai authorities stated they were ruling the death a homicide and were working with the International Criminal Police Organization to investigate the incident[21] Other news reports gave varying causes of death including suffocation with a pillow and poisoning.[22][23][24]
Hamas statements
The day following Mabhouh's death, Hamas' armed wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, announced that he died of terminal cancer in a hospital in the United Arab Emirates.[25]
On January 29, Hamas' deputy politburo chief Moussa Abu Marzouk said, "Mossad agents are those who assassinated al-Mabhouh".[26] Top Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar speculated that same day that it was possible that members of the entourage of Israeli infrastructure minister Uzi Landau, who were in the United Arab Emirates at the time for a renewable energy conference, were involved in his assassination.[27][28] Landau dismissed the claim, stating that his delegation was in Abu Dhabi, some 120 km from Dubai, and was escorted by an eight-man UAE security team at all times.[29][30]
On February 2, Hamas' representative in Lebanon Osama Hamdan said that Palestinian Authority security forces might have been involved in the death, stating that, "The Palestinian Authority security forces are pursuing [our] fighters and they have killed dozens of them since 1994."[31] Haaretz reported that same day that details from a preliminary Hamas investigation procured by the newspaper suggested that Mabhouh was assassinated by agents of an Arab government, and that al-Mabhouh was wanted by Egypt and Jordan.[32] On February 12, senior Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal rejected reports that Hamas blamed Arab states for Mabhouh's death, and said the Israeli Mossad was solely responsible.[33]
On February 19, Hamas representatives said that the two Palestinians arrested in Dubai, Ahmad Hassanain and Anwar Shheibar, are former members of Fatah's security forces and work at a construction company in Dubai owned by Mohammed Dahlan, a senior Fatah security official. A senior Hamas official told Al-Hayat newspaper that the two provided logistical aid to the Mossad hit team alleged to have carried out the killing, renting them cars and hotel rooms. Dahlan and Fatah denied the charges.[34]
Suspects
Dubai's police chief,Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim announced on February 18 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."[19]On february 20 he is quoted as saying that his force has evidence directly incriminating the Mossad in the killing adding that among the new evidence available are telephone communications between the assassinss who have been detected. [35]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 subsequently leaving the country before his discovery.[10]
The identities used by eleven of the suspects have been made public.[36] The total number of suspects stands at eighteen, all of whom entered the country using fake or fraudulently obtained passports.[37][38] Dubai police, who said their airport personnel were trained by Europeans to identify faked documents, said the European passports used were not forgeries.[39] Both the British and Irish governments said the passports bearing their countries' names were, "either fraudulently obtained or [are] outright fakes."[40]
- United Kingdom: Six passports.[41] Britain's Foreign Office believes that the passports used were fraudulent;[42] one report indicated that they had issued the passports in January, the only difference between the actual identities being the photographs.[43]
- Republic of Ireland: Five passports. Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs declared that the passports used by the suspects were counterfeit[44] and stated that it was "unable to identify any of those three individuals as being genuine Irish". According to the department of foreign affairs, Ireland has never issued passports in those names.[45] While the names and signatures were fake, the numbers on the passports were genuine, and belong to Irish citizens.[38] Four of the five citizens have been contacted by the Department of Foreign Affairs, all of whom live in Ireland; none of them have travelled to the Middle East, lost their passports or had them stolen.[38]
- France: One passport (suspected of being used by the hit squad leader,[46] and logistical coordinator).[47] According to a spokesman of the French Foreign Affairs ministry, the passport was counterfeit.[48] The French government summoned the Israeli chargé d'affaires in Paris on February 18 and the French Foreign Ministry issued a statement expressing, "deep concern about the malicious and fraudulent use of these French administrative documents."[49]
- Germany: One passport.[47] German officials initially said that the passport number which they received from the authorities in Dubai is either incomplete or does not exist.[50] Later, it was revealed that the passport was genuine. According to German federal investigators, an Israeli man named Michael Bodenheimer acquired German citizenship in June 2008 after providing immigration officials in Cologne with the pre-World War II address of his grandparents.[51]
The names used on the six UK passports and the German passport belong to individuals who live in Israel and hold dual citizenships.[52] An analysis of the assassination in the The Jewish Chronicle notes that this, "is the first real piece of information that could link Israel to the operation."[53] Mossad is known to use the identities of Israelis with dual citizenship. In 1997, two Mossad agents traveled with Canadian passports of dual citizenship Israelis to Amman, Jordan in a botched attempt on the life of Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.[54] In 2004, Mossad operative, Urie Zoshe Kelman, a dual citizenship israeli entered New Zealand with a Canadian passport to try to fraudulently obtain a passport from that country. He was sentenced with an accomplice to a six months prison term. Kelman had previously traveled to New Zealand in 1999. During his stay he obtained from the Canadian embassy a temporary replacement Canadian passport having declared his lost.[55] According to former katsa Victor Ostrovsky, a Canadian citizen, the Mossad formally asked permission to use the passports of Israelis with dual nationality, but "I believe at some point, they stopped asking".[56]
A Jerusalem-based British citizen whose name was used on one of the passports told Reuters news agency that he has never been to Dubai and had no connection with the Mossad or the assassination. He said that he did not "know how this happened or who chose my name or why".[57] In addition, three other Israelis whose names appeared on the passports reported to the Israeli Channel 2 news that they did not understand the coincidence, and were not related at all to the suspects.[50][58] 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.[59] The British Foreign Office also summoned the Israeli ambassador on February 18 to share information on the matter.[60][61] 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,[62] but this was denied by the UK government.[63]
The photographs of 11 of the suspected assassins were added to Interpol's most wanted list on February 18, 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.[64]
Dubai police reported that some of the suspects carried credit cards issued in the names used in the passports they carried. These credit cards were used to buy their plane tickets in other countries before their arrival in Dubai.[65] There wre reports that the credit cards were American-issued and that the United States' Federal Bureau of Investigation might also investigate.[66]
Arrests
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.[67] Hamas has claimed that their arrest is evidence linking the Palestinian Authority to the assassination, while the Palestinian Authority has retorted by accusing the arrested Palestinians of being members of Hamas.[68] The two men are reported to be related to one another and to have lived in Gaza until Hamas took over full control of the Strip in 2006. One went straight to Dubai, while the other joined him after first going to Ramallah, where he was sentenced to death by a Palestinian Authority court, a punishment generally handed down to Israeli collaborators.[69] The recruitment of Ahmad Hasnin by the Mossad could have been done when he was imprisonned by Israel for a month in June 2007 for his involvement with Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the military wing for Fatah. He came to the UAE in 2008, according to a family source.[70]