Dubai police has strong evidence to implicate Israeli intelligence agency Mossad in the assassination of Hamas leader Mahmoud Al Mabhouh here last month, a top official has said.
Telephone communication between the culprits, monitored by investigators, are among key pieces of evidences that establish the Mossad link to the killing, Dubai Police Chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim has said.
Mr. Tamim also said that it has been found that some suspects bought their flight tickets to Dubai with credit cards issued in the same names as their fake passports. The credit cards were however reportedly not used in the UAE.
Al Mabhouh was killed in a Dubai hotel room on January 19, hours after entering the country. However Israel has not accepted the involvement of its secret service.
“The suspects bought the tickets to Dubai with credit cards. The credit cards used bear the same names as the passports which the suspects entered Dubai with,” Mr. Khalfan said in an interview to Dubai TV.
The Police Chief said the passports used by the suspects had all the genuine specifications of passports from the respective countries and there is no circular from the Interpol that these passports have been stolen.
However, it is possible that an intelligence body may have forged these passports through the same manufacturing unit that made the original passports for these countries.
The Dubai Police had on Monday released security video from the hotel and named 11 suspects - six British, three Irish, one French and one German.
However, all of those identities have since turned out to be fraudulently obtained. The issuing of credit cards raises new questions over the extent of the identity fraud.
According to local Arab media reports, Dubai Police had strong evidence connected to the credit cards and the communication tools used by the suspects.
Meanwhile, Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim has called for an international police team from the UAE, UK, Ireland, France and Germany to be set up, to solve the case.
“Three days after discovering the crime, I announced that it was no more mysterious, since we had all their pictures after 20 hours,” Lt Gen Dahi said during the interview.
“Our men worked in a highly professional way, and we, at Dubai Police, know how to turn back the clock and start from the beginning to unveil a crime, even though the suspects could see the cameras in some places and did not see them in other places,” he said of the CCTV footage at the Bustan Rotana Hotel where the murder took place.
Meir Dagan, head of the Mossad, is under intense criticism and pressure to resign over the murder of the top Hamas operative in Dubai after five Israeli men said their identities were stolen by the assassins, believed to be agents of the Israel’s infamous secret service.
