Mossad Hitsquad valt door de mand

Onschuldige Britten in beeld om aanslag Dubai



De mannen die de Palestijnse Hamasstrijder Mahmoud al-Mabhouh (50) op 20 januari hebben gedood in een hotel in Dubai, hebben de paspoorten van onschuldige Britten gekopieerd die in Israël wonen of waren. Dat meldden Britse media woensdag.

,,Ik ben boos, ontsteld en bang. Ik weet niet hoe dit heeft kunnen gebeuren en wie mijn naam heeft uitgekozen en waarom'', aldus de 31-jarige Melvyn Mildiner woensdag. ,,Ik ging naar bed met een longontsteking en werd wakker als moordenaar'', aldus Mildiner in de Britse krant The Independent. De in Israël wonende Brit zei tegen de krant dat hij zijn paspoort gewoon thuis in de kast heeft liggen. Een andere Brit, wiens naam nu wereldwijd rondzingt als terrorist, heeft in de jaren '70 enige tijd in een kibboets in Israël gewerkt.

Volgens Hamas zou de Israëlische geheime dienst Mossad de aanslag hebben gepleegd. De Mossad gebruikt volgens een Israëlische veiligheidsexpert bij voorkeur de identiteit van mensen die echt bestaan in plaats van valse identiteitsbewijzen te maken. Omdat er zoveel buitenlandse immigranten in het land wonen, zou de Mossad volgens de expert uit een grote hoeveelheid identiteiten kunnen kiezen om te gebruiken voor zijn geheim agenten. Zo moet een immigrant een kopie van zijn paspoort aan zijn aanvraag voor het Israëlische staatsburgerschap toevoegen.

De aanslag op het kopstuk van de Palestijnse Hamasbeweging werd gepleegd door tien mannen en een vrouw die met zes Britse, drie Ierse een Duits en een Frans paspoort naar Dubai waren gereisd. Groot-Britannië heeft bevestigd dat de Britse paspoorten zijn vervalst. De Ierse paspoorten zijn van niet-bestaande personen. Het Duitse paspoortnummer klopt niet. Over het Franse paspoort is nog geen duidelijkheid

http://www.depers.nl/buitenland/441346/Britten-in-beeld-om-aanslag-Dubai.html




http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1150386.html

Egypt official: Israel assassination policy inflaming entire Mideast

By Haaretz Service

Tags: Israel news, Mossad, Hamas


Israel is provoking the entire Mideast with an alleged ongoing covert campaign to assassinate top terror militants beyond the country's borders, an Egyptian official told the London Times on Saturday.

Referring to allegations that Israeli intelligence was upping its attempts to hurt terror strongmen beyond its borders, the source told the Times that his country was taking notice of Israel's "comings and goings."

"We are aware that there is more activity both on our ground and other countries in the region," the source added, claiming that Israel was "trying to embroil us all in their conflict."


The assassination of top Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh late last month is the most recent incident in which Israeli intelligence is alleged to have perpetrated, one which the militant group was, according to a source quoted in the Times article, keen to cover up.

"There has been growing co-operation between Gaza and Iran. Israel can read the writing on the wall and they know that with the help of Iran, the Hamas Government in Gaza will become stronger and will fight better," the source told the Times on Saturday.

"But Israel is overstepping their boundaries," the Palestinian source added. "Other countries don't want to become a killing field for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

The Times article claimed that Israel's alleged renewed attempts at high-level militants began with the appointment of current Mossad chief Meir Dagan, citing the Beirut killings of two Hezbollah strongmen in 2003 and 2004, as well as planting the car bomb in Damascus that killed the top Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyah in February 2008

Interior Minister Eli Yishai was also quoted in the Times report, answering whether Mossad had been involved in the Dubai assassination.

"All the security services make, thank God, great efforts to safeguard the security of the state of Israel," Yishai is quoted as saying

Following alleged Dubai mess, the Mossad chief must go

By Amir Oren

Tags: Mossad, Dubai assassination


An important figure with many followers goes overboard and gets exiled to a faraway village in the north. That creative solution comes courtesy of the rabbinical forum "Takana." But the sanction meted out to Rabbi Mordechai Elon should also be applied to another gentleman, who anyway already resides in the north: Maj. Gen. (ret.) Meir Dagan, the belligerent, heavy-handed chief of the Mossad.

The State of Israel did not claim responsibility for the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. The entire matter is treated as AFMR - According to Foreign Media Reports. We can still argue both sides of the broader issue at hand: assassinating senior officials in hotels (see under Rehavam Ze'evi) and in public (Imad Mughniyeh, Fathi Shkaki, Abbas Mussawi, Ali Hassan Salameh, and the list goes on). But we could also narrow the question to the quality of the performance in Dubai. And what must have seemed to its perpetrators as a huge success is now being overshadowed by enormous question marks.

If the perpetrators were from the Mossad (AFMR, of course), Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu must be walking around with an acute sense of deja vu. Once again, an assassination of a senior Hamas leader in a friendly Arab country; once again, an operation designed to kill someone quietly and inconspicuously; once again, a diplomatic mess; and once again, it is all happening on Netanyahu's watch. In 1997, it was Khaled Meshal in Jordan. This time, it's Mabhouh in Dubai.

The anticipated diplomatic crisis is not, so far, with Dubai, but with the countries whose passports were used by the assassins. The United Kingdom and Ireland were used once again, and this time, a French connection topped it off. It is as if Israeli governments had never apologized to London for using British documentation; as if they had not promised solemnly, when passports of Her Majesty's subjects were found in a certain phone booth, that this would never happen again.

This time, they didn't mess with feisty New Zealand. But other countries also do not tend to be forgiving of such insolent violations of their sovereignty. Italy, for instance, has engaged for the last few years in a merciless attack on the CIA, which abducted a suspected Egyptian terrorist on Italian soil (Mordechai Vanunu's abduction came decades too early), as well as on its own intelligence agencies, which assisted the American one. As soon as the abducted man's wife filed a complaint, the Italian judiciary ruled that it could not possibly avoid investigating and pressing charges. In Italy, like in Dubai, meticulous work was invested in collecting evidence against the suspects, mostly by going through cellular communications data and tracing credit card trails in hotels and other businesses.

But even if whoever carried out the assassination does reach some kind of arrangement with the infuriated Western nations, it still has an obligation to its own citizens.

This obligation was violated, thanks to the Mossad -AFMR - and the attorney general, whether through action or inaction.

Using the identities of real, living, innocent Israelis for operational documentation is against the law. This kind of abuse also causes innocent civilians to suffer the evil that already plagues ministers and officers: being prevented from traveling abroad for fear of being arrested by Interpol on suspicion of being the Dubai assassins.

Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy pushed for a Mossad Law to be legislated that would enshrine the state's obligation to defend its agents caught breaking laws abroad. The initiative never got off the ground: A state can't legitimize illegality. But neither can it allow one of its institutions to arbitrarily harm civilians not the police, not
the tax authority, not the Shin Bet security service and not the Mossad.

Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein was asked yesterday whether an investigation will be opened following the public complaints of those whose identities were stolen from them, and whose lives and liberty are therefore now threatened. Weinstein has not yet had time to study the issue. He has some superficial knowledge of Dagan's character, but no prejudice.

Netanyahu played deaf to the warnings and extended Dagan's tenure for an eighth year, a decision as hasty as it was unnecessary. But the Mossad, like the Jerusalem District Attorney's Office, cannot hinge upon one man, without whom everything would collapse.

What is needed now is a swift decision to terminate Dagan's contract and to appoint a new Mossad chief -one of the current department heads, one of their predecessors, or a talented Israel Defense Forces general. There's no disease (AFMR) without a cure: An easel in Rosh Pina is yearning for pensioner Dagan to come home.

Israel has nothing to worry about over Dubai killing

By Yossi Melman

Tags: Dubai assassination, Mossad


It seems suspicions are narrowing in on Israel. Israeli citizens with dual citizenship, who emigrated from Britain a long time ago and whose names and identities were used for an operation that led to the assassination of a senior Hamas figure in Dubai, are justifiably feeling they were pawns in a much larger game.

From now on, they'll have to explain to the British consulate in Tel Aviv and the British Home Office that they were not in Dubai, had not participated in the assassination and had not misplaced their passports.

However, a deeper look into the matter suggests this will not be too difficult for them to prove. The governments of both Ireland and the United Kingdom already announced yesterday that the passports used by the suspects in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh were forged.

The Mossad has used forged passports on a number of occasions in the past, or used the names of real people on fake passports with photographs of its agents.

Agent Sylvia Rafael, from South Africa, was arrested in an assassination attempt in Norway that ended in tragedy, as a result of the mistaken identity of a Moroccan waiter in July 1973. She was traveling with the forged identity of a Canadian photographer by the name of Patricia Roxburgh.

Her colleagues on that mission were arrested with the forged or borrowed identities of British and French citizens. In 1979, according to the Times of London, an Israel Military Industries' courier left British passports in a public telephone booth in Bonn, meant for agents on a secret negotiation for the supply of arms to China prior to the existence of diplomatic ties between Israel and Beijing. The Mossad had provided the documents.

In 1997, Mossad agents were arrested in Jordan following the failed attempt on the life of Hamas politburo leader Khaled Meshal. They were carrying Canadian passports. Following that incident, Ottawa demanded clarifications from Israel and received promises that Canadian passports would not be used in future operations.

It turned out that at least one of the passports belonged to a Jewish Canadian who had arrived in Israel to study and said that certain people contacted him and asked to make use of his passport for a short period of time in the service of the State of Israel. He later denied this version of events, claiming the passport had been taken without his consent.

Several years later, two Mossad agents were arrested in New Zealand attempting to acquire real passports using the name of a local quadriplegic youth, who was highly unlikely to apply for a passport to leave the country. In this case, too, Israel was forced to apologize and promised not to violate the sovereignty of New Zealand in the future.

As such, we can point to a modus operandi in which Israel was forced to use foreign passports for operations involving assassinations of enemy targets.

In the New Zealand operation, a great deal of effort was put into acquiring one or possibly more passports - suggesting that the Mossad is in need of genuine passports. Indeed, intelligence agencies always prefer to use original documentation and only when they have no choice do they forge passports or borrow other peoples' identities.

The future will be even more difficult thanks to biometric measures that will be included in travel documents - with Israel being one of the countries leading this effort. Forged passports will be impossible to use, as it is impossible to forge fingerprints or irises.

Still, many of the countries whose passports were allegedly used do not like Hamas; and the government of Dubai, despite its impressive investigation, does not really want to get to the bottom of this. Dubai would like to continue giving off the impression that it is a safe country, all of whose visitors are there for only business or tourism.

There are other Arab countries who do not consider Hamas a friend and who are in a secret war - no less bitter than Israel's - against the Islamist organization. Jordan is one of them, as is Egypt.

As part of the investigation two Palestinians were arrested in Dubai, suspected of aiding the assassination team, and it is not impossible that the whole story is another example of the sort of psychological warfare against Hamas that would have the organization become even more suspicious of flawed security within its ranks.

Looking at the incident in perspective, a senior Hamas figure responsible for the deaths of two Israel Defense Forces soldiers and a key contact in the group's arms smuggling is dead.

Both Hamas and the authorities in Dubai took 10 days to realize that the death was not of natural causes. All the operatives managed to escape unscathed. This is not a modus operandi only of Israel's intelligence services, but of any professional organization.

As such, unless dramatic evidence is found to definitively prove an Israeli connection, it is likely that the State of Israel will emerge from this affair unblemished and the Mossad will continue enjoying a reputation of fearless determination and nearly unstoppable capabilities.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1150394.html

U.K. summons Israel envoy over passports used in Hamas killing

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz correspondent, and DPA

Tags: Dubai assassination, Hamas

Ireland also expected to send for Israeli ambassador to explain identity thefts by Dubai assassins.


The British government on Wednesday summoned Israel's Ambassador to explain the use of passports held by six British-born Israelis in the assassination of a Hamas official in Dubai.

Ron Prosor will meet British foreign office officials on Thursday morning. Ireland is also expected to summon Israel's Dublin envoy on Thursday, diplomatic sources told Haaretz.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said on Wednesday he would launch a full investigation into the use of the forged passports by a hit squad that murdered Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last month.


"We are looking into this at this very moment, we have got to carry out a full investigation into this. The British passport is an important document that has got to be held with care," Brown said in a radio interview.

Opposition politicians in Britain have demanded that the Israeli ambassador be summoned over the affair, but the Foreign Office said Wednesday it had "not made any official representation to the Israeli ambassador about the case".

Brown said the British government would seek to accumulate evidence about "what actually happened" before making any official statements on the matter.

On Wednesday Ireland said it was trying to trace three Irish citizens whose identities were used by the assassins, apparently contradicting an earlier claim by the government that they did not exist.

The Palestinian militant group Hamas has blamed Israel for the assassination and vowed revenge on Wednesday.

At a memorial rally in Gaza for Mabhouh on Wednesday, officials from the Islamist group, including masked, armed militants said that Hamas' Izz-el Deen al-Qassam armed wing "will never rest until they reach his killers."

Hamas' exiled leader in Damascus Khaled Meshal addressed the rally of several thousand by video link and said: "We call on European countries to punish Israel's leaders for violating their laws, Israel deserves to be placed on the terror list."

A security source in Israel said the target, Mabhouh, played a key role in smuggling Iranian-funded arms to Islamist militants in the Gaza Strip. Hamas confirmed the information.

Lieberman: No proof Mossad was behind assassination

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said earlier on Wednesday that there was no proof Israel's Mossad spy agency was behind the assassination, after it emerged that some members of the hit squad involved in the killing had used the identities of foreign-born Israelis.

Lieberman did not deny outright Israeli involvement in the killing, saying only that Israel has a "policy of ambiguity" on intelligence matters and there was no proof it was behind the assassination.

"There is no reason to think that it was the Israeli Mossad, and not some other intelligence service or country up to some mischief," Lieberman said when asked about the operation and the identity-theft.

Rafi Eitan, a former government minister and high-ranking Mossad official, denied Israel's involvement flat-out.

"The Mossad was not behind the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, but rather a foreign organization that is trying to frame Israel," he told the radio station.

Men with the same names as seven of the 11 suspects whose European passport photos were distributed by Dubai this week reside in Israel, and those reached by reporters insisted their identities had been stolen and noted the pictures were not a match.

Six of the men are Britons who immigrated to Israel. The seventh is an American Israeli, whose name Dubai said was on a German passport used by one of the assassins.

As the mystery over suspects' identities deepened, Britain and Ireland said they believed the British and Irish passports used by the alleged killers were forged.

In the radio interview, Lieberman shrugged off any prospect of diplomatic problems with Britain over suspicions a Mossad team had used counterfeit British passports.

"I think Britain recognizes that Israel is a responsible country and that our security activity is conducted according to very clear, cautious and responsible rules of the game. Therefore we have no cause for concern," he said.

Hit squads dispatched by Mossad have used foreign passports in the past, notably in 1997 when agents entered Jordan on Canadian passports and bungled an attempt to kill Hamas leader Khaled Meshal with poison.

In 1987, Britain protested to Israel about what London called the misuse by Israeli authorities of forged British passports and said it received assurances steps had been taken to prevent future occurrences.

Dubai narrows down six more suspects

Dubai police have meanwhile narrowed down another six suspects in addition to the 11 European passport-holders named earlier this week, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.

The names of the additional six have yet to be released and the actual identities of the other 11 suspects are still in question.

Dubai Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim announced on Monday that senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was murdered by an 11-member hit squad of mercenaries carrying European passports.

Tamim said that arrest warrants would be issued soon and while he did not accuse Israel directly, he did say it was possible that "leaders of certain countries gave orders to their intelligence agents."

"We do not rule out Mossad, but when we arrest those suspects we will know who masterminded it. [We have not] issued arrest warrants yet, but will do so soon," he told a press conference on Monday.

Two Palestinians have already been arrested in connection to the assassination.

The group was responsible for killing Mabhouh in his hotel room on January 20, a slaying that has elicited vows of revenge from the Palestinian militant group.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1150424.html

ziet ernaar uit dat alles zich tegen henzelf begint te keren...

war in the intelligence community...