Israeli media: Mossad assassinated Al-Mabhouh

[seemslikeadream]

'Britain knew about Mossad hit'

[seemslikeadream]

Dubai police want head of Israel's spy agency arrested

[AlicetheKurious]

The Mossad man said Israeli intelligence chiefs understand British authorities will have to 'slap them on the wrist' and reportedly added: "The British government has to be seen to be going through the motions."

It's so humiliating being a "friend of Israel". They shit all over you, and you have to lick it off and thank them for the privilege.

[AlicetheKurious]

Hmmm.

Austria probes possible phone tie to Mumbai attack
Fri Dec 5, 2008 10:38pm IST

VIENNA, Dec 5 (Reuters) - Austria is looking into whether militants who besieged Mumbai last week used an Austrian telephone number to communicate during the attacks, the Interior Ministry said on Friday. ...
http://in.reuters.com/article/domesticN ... 9020081205

"Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of (Mahmoud) al-Mabhouh. It is 99 percent, if not 100 percent, that Mossad is standing behind the murder," Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim told the Emirates-based The National newspaper. He added that Dubai police now believe that the assassination team comprised 18 members, and that they used a location in Austria as a "command center."
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/A ... 87716.html

[AlicetheKurious]

According to Al-Jazeera, two Palestinians from Mohamed Dahlan's gang have been arrested by Dubai police for complicity in the murder of Mabhouh. England's Daily Mail also mentioned it. As one blogger very rightly says:

The Daily Mail story also reveals further details about the trap set by the Mossad for al-Mabouh and Palestinian participation in it. If the story is true it will further damage Fatah’s reputation:


Intelligence sources say al-Mabhouh was lured to a meeting in Dubai by two men who had worked with him in Hamas in Gaza. He did not realise they had defected to the more moderate Fatah, bitter enemies of Hamas, and were secretly working with the Israelis.

This would mean that Fatah in some capacity colluded with Israel in order to kill this man. It would mean that Hamas’ efforts to root out Israeli collaborators were justified. It would mean that Fatah betrayed a fellow Palestinian to an enemy of the Palestinians. What possible legitimate purpose (short of cold-blooded revenge) could such collusion serve unless Fatah is completely bankrupt both as a political and national movement? Link

Yeah, well, all that's not exactly news -- in fact, it's largely the reason Hamas was so overwhelmingly chosen in the last free Palestinian elections. And why even starvation and phosphorous bombs won't make them choose Fateh to represent them.


Dahlan consulting his boss, Ehud Olmert


The illegitimate "president" of the Palestinian Authority, Fateh's
Mahmoud Abbas getting a quick cuddle from his BFF

[AlicetheKurious]

Dubai Assassination Was Work of Mossad and Likely Sanctioned by Prime Minister Says Former Intel Officer

* By Kim Zetter Email Author
* February 18, 2010 |
* 7:15 pm |
* Categories: Cover-Ups, Crime, Surveillance

The elaborate assassination of a Hamas official last month in Dubai has all the earmarks of a Mossad operation and was likely sanctioned by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, says a former case officer in the Israeli intelligence service.

Victor Ostrovsky, who wrote a controversial book about his four years with the Mossad in the 1980s, says that many of the details in the surveillance video of an alleged 11-person assassination team indicate that the operation was likely rushed, and that the use of aliases belonging to Israeli citizens is a common tactic of the Mossad, though generally not for assassination plots.
...

Ostrovsky told Threat Level it was common during his time in the Mossad to ask permission of foreign-born Israelis to use their passports for intelligence operations.

“When you come to live in Israel and you’re a dual citizen, a lot of times you’re asked for the use of your passport,” he said. “In the 90s they used to ask. Especially if you’re in the military and you’re an officer and you have dual citizenship.”

But then, he says, there came a time when people began to say no “and they started to do that without asking [permission].”

Ostrovsky said, however, that it was highly unusual to use the name of an Israeli for a kill operation such as this one. Instead, such passports might be used for an undercover Israeli operative in the United Kingdom posing as a businessman traveling to Syria for a week or so for business.

“It’s not supposed to be used in operations like this. It’s not a throwaway. It’s not something you put at risk,” he said. “Having used it this way shows that whoever did it was really in a rush.”

Ostrovsky says he worked for the Mossad between 1982 and 1986. He spent two and a half years in training, after which he worked as a case officer out of Israel. His job was to enter surrounding countries, such as Greece, Cyprus, Turkey and Jordan to recruit local spies for the Mossad. Although he was never involved in assassination operations, he says he knows how they were conducted, and the Dubai operation matches Mossad tactics.

The Israeli government has never acknowledged Ostrovsky’s work for the Mossad, but tried to halt publication of his book By Way of Deception.

...

Ostrovsky told Threat Level that there’s little doubt for him that the Mossad is behind the plot.

He said the number of people involved in the operation indicates that it may have been put together in a rush.

“The less time you have to plan and carry out an operation, the more people you need to carry it out [on the ground],” he said. “The more time you have to plan . . . there’s a lot of things you eliminate.”

If you know that you can stop the elevator in the basement, for example, you don’t then need people guarding the elevator lobby on the victim’s floor to make sure no one steps off the elevator, he said.

He says it was likely that the Mossad’s second in command for operations was in the hotel or the area when the assassination took place and has gone unnoticed by the Dubai authorities.

Dubai police identified one of the team members named “Peter Elvinger” as the leader of the operation. Elvinger was caught on tape at the Dubai airport shortly after arriving the morning of the assassination. He left the airport terminal, then came back in to speak with someone briefly. Shortly after the victim checked into his hotel room, Elvinger booked the room across from the victim’s room. But he never entered the room. Instead he gave the key to other team members, who used the room to organize their attack. Elvinger also left Dubai an hour before the killing occurred.

Ostrovsky, however, said the real leader of the operation “would be one of the last ones to leave” and would not have departed before the operation was completed.

Ostrovsky said that ever since the agency bungled an operation in Lillhammer in 1973 when it killed a waiter erroneously believed to be part of the Palestinian Black September group, it has stationed a high-ranking officer on the ground to call off kill operations at the last minute if needed. The identity of this officer is generally not known by the public or even to most members of the kill team, who would only have indirect communication with the officer through a command center. According to investigators in Dubai, the alleged assassins never called each on their phones, but did make a number of calls to Austria, where their command and control center was believed to be stationed.

Ostrovsky said although the operatives scattered to various parts of the world after the operation was completed, he believes they’re all back in Israel now. He says other countries are likely sifting through their airport surveillance tapes now to track the final destination of the team members.

He added that the Mossad was likely surprised by how the Dubai authorities pieced everything together so well and publicized the video and passport photos of the suspects.

“Nobody thought that somebody was going to piece that all together,” he said. “After all, who really cares about a guy in Hamas? There’s a perception that . . . the Arab world doesn’t really like Palestinians and that everyone would say it’s just another terrorist killed, great. Nobody’s going to make a fuss.”

He said he’s surprised that Israel would have risked such an operation while the government is in the midst of negotiations to release Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who is reportedly being held prisoner in Gaza by Hamas since June 2006.

“It shocks that they would do [the assassination] now,” Ostrovsky said. “But that’s Netanyahu in my opinion.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was in office in 1997 during another Mossad assassination operation. This one involved agents who, under Netanyahu’s orders, traveled to Jordan on forged Canadian passports and ambushed Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal as he was entering his office building, injecting him with a lethal nerve toxic. The plot backfired, however, when one of Meshaal’s bodyguards gave chase and caught the agents. Israel was forced to provide Jordanian authorities with an antidote to the poison to save Meshaal.

Ostrovsky said that despite the Dubai operation’s success, it was amateurish at moments. He points to the bad disguises the suspects used — wigs, glasses and moustaches — and the fact that some of the suspects seemed to slip into the same room to change their disguises. He also points to two of the suspects who followed the victim to his hotel room while dressed in tennis outfits and who didn’t seem to know what they were doing.

The two seemed to confer momentarily while the victim exited the elevator, as if deciding who would follow the victim to his room. A hotel employee accompanying the victim to his room even glanced back at the two, as if noticing their confusion.

“A lot of people in the field make those mistakes and they never come up because they’re never [caught on tape],” Ostrovsky said.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/0 ... of-mossad/

[Byrne]

Imagine that it was Iranian agents who had murdered an Israeli official somewhere abroad using forged passports of other nations (e.g. British, Irish etc.). Imagine the resulting hoohah from the British and US goverments.............

[chump]

It seems like the sparks are always flying around Israel. This an intense story; like Alice said, "Layers within layers, and mirrors at every turn."

If the Dubai officials wanted to make Mahbouh 's death look like a suicide why didn't they confiscate the security cameras. Not enough juice? Did the videos slip out? Is it a psyop? I even saw those videos on the evening news (but I have to admit I wasn't paying attention).

It brings to mind a possibility for revealing the truth in the future; perhaps a beneficial aspect of the surveillance society. Somebody could probably follow these guys all the way back home. Then it's a question of, Whadya gonna do 'bout it.

The bigs boys will talk and the authorities will change their story as many times as they have to; until it all smoothes over. Business as usual.

Maybe not.

Interesting.

By the way, MinM, those audios that you are posting start playing the instant I click on the page, even as I post this comment I am listening to not one, but two audio clips. I think I'm going crazy! Is there a way that you could set those so that I can hear them when I'm ready?

Thanks.

[AlicetheKurious]

It brings to mind a possibility for revealing the truth in the future; perhaps a beneficial aspect of the surveillance society.

That depends -- in this case, the Dubai police's first move was to contact the Brits to let them know that British passports were used in the murder, and to ask for assistance. They waited for 6 days, with no reply. Finally, they got so fed up they took the unprecedented step of publishing the videos and photos of the gang, and to hell with it.

If the British government had responded any time during those six days, we probably would know very little, and the whole matter would have been hushed up.

Now it's too late.

[hava1]

A good operation in terms of domestic human rights. At least they stopped using MK victims for "identity". I didn't expect this forum here to mind the Israeli victims of the assassination business, but at least this might signify a change in US modes of operation and the wrapping up of the MK little soldiers progs.


It seems though that the old guard is up for extermination, for lack of public interest. and the shredding instinct of the intel community. Btw, A PERSONAL NOTE HERE TO aLICE AND jEFF,
in light of the Brittish response, shame on canada for abusing the wretched victims of the thugs. Been there and didnt forget. FWIW, probably not much.

[AlicetheKurious]

Links in original:

Interpol Warrants Against Dagan, Netanyahu Likely

The Dubai police have announced that they plan to introduce in the coming days new evidence in the Mossad assassination of Hamas’ Mahmoud al-Mabouh that traces the crime directly to the agency and its Herziliya headquarters. When that happens, the police chief indicated he would ask Interpol to file arrest warrants for Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Bibi Netanyahu:


An insider close to the case confirmed that Mr Dagan and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, are top of the Gulf state’s wanted list.

Gordon Thomas, in his otherwise hagiographic, simpering article spouting Mossad’s praises makes crystal clear that all assassinations are formally approved by the prime minister himself. So the chance that he can duck culpability are nonexistent. Thomas also reveals that the Mossad has only 48 personnel assigned to its assassinations team. 11 have now been publicly exposed and will never be able to play any public role in future. That would leave a fairly large hole in the program for some time unless they have recruits and trainees waiting in the wings to step in for the next hit. One wonders what will be the disguise of choice next time around. Tennis has definitely jumped the shark.

Another factor that widens the net in this crime is that the killers possessed five American-issued credit cards which they used to buy airline tickets to Dubai. It would seem that someone in the Mossad actually wanted to widen the band of nation’s implicated in the crime, thus hoping that the more countries involved the less any one of them would wish to delve too deeply into the matter. If the Obama administration was as concerned about this as it would be say, if Hamas or Hezbollah used an American credit card in the process of assassinating an Israeli, then it would allow the FBI to become involved in the case in a robust way, which would only make it more likely that we would get to the bottom of this mess of a matter. But the chances that this president has any desire to stick his hand into this hornet’s nest and stir up the Israel lobby are nil.

That rumination above about hypocrisy in our treatment of political assassins and their victims is highlighted via this interesting comment from Geoffrey Wheatcroft, who:


…Highlights a blatant double standard between the treatment of terrorists of different nationalities and hues. The word “racist” is overused, but in this context it applies all too accurately.

In other words, the nations of the world are able and willing to nod and wink at an Israeli assassination of a Hamas leader, but if the shoe were on the other foot they would be after Hamas hammer and tong. If this were an Iranian assassination we might be at war presently. What puts Israel is a separate category? And isn’t it time we treat every such assassination with the same outrage and determination to see justice done?

Two former Gazans who are affiliated with Fatah and apparently knew al-Mabouh when he lived there may have lured him to Dubai for the fatal meeting. It appears that the Palestinians were turned by the Mossad and became the catalysts for the operation. Such a development will further diminish Fatah as a viable political force since it will be seen as the source of those who betray their fellow Palestinians for a price or whatever blandishment persuaded them to become an agent of the Israelis. These suspects are probably spilling their guts to the Dubai authorities as we speak, which is likely why they speak with such authority about the new information further implicating the Mossad to come out in coming days.

The circus continues. This entire episode makes you long for the days when British-born Ephraim Halevy ran Mossad and it could be counted on to have some semblance of constraint, caution, and compunction. All that has flown to the winds by the imperious Dagan who was advised by the Israeli PM who appointed him to perform the job with a “knife in his teeth.” Sounds like he’d read too many pirate stories.

One can only hope that the perspective of this report from the Guardian turns out to be true:


The Dubai assassination…may yet turn out to be far more damaging – not least because the political and diplomatic context has changed in the last decade. Israel’s reputation has suffered an unprecedented battering, reaching a new low during last year’s Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip. “In the current climate, the traces left behind in Dubai are likely to lead to very serious harm to Israel’s international standing,” the former diplomat Alon Liel commented yesterday.

One indication of such a development is this story, which can’t make the Israeli government happy. Bernard Kouchner, France’s foreign ministry is using the killing as proof positive of the immediate need for an independent Palestinian state. I hear an echo of a recently shelved EU initiative which would have done precisely that. Reopening this plan would be a most welcome result of the botched Dubai murder.

I’m thinking of establishing an award for most sycophantic pro-Mossad media puff piece of the day. Today’s award definitely goes to this one from Haaretz which is puerile in every possible way. Not only that, it strives to find a silver lining in every cloud including this one which bizarrely claims the photographs of the Mossad agents revealed by the Dubai police might not be those of the real agents:


…There is no guarantee that those photographs actually show their real faces.

Wha? Did they all have plastic surgery before the operation or will they all have plastic surgery now? Whose faces are they? And what are Issacharoff and Harel talking about? It makes the whole caper into even more of a bad Hollywood spy thriller than it already is. And to think that I once admired Ami Issacharoff because he stood next to a Palestinian home during a settler melee to ensure the family inside wouldn’t be incinerated by the pogromists. His new Haaretz blog, by the way, is aptly entitled the MESS Report.

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun ... hu-likely/

[American Dream]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.inf ... e24818.htm

Meir Dagan: The Mastermind Behind Mossad's Secret War

By Uzi Mahnaimi


February 21, 2010 "The Times" -- IN early January two black Audi A6 limousines drove up to the main gate of a building on a small hill in the northern suburbs of Tel Aviv: the headquarters of Mossad, the Israeli secret intelligence agency, known as the “midrasha”.

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, stepped out of his car and was greeted by Meir Dagan, the 64-year-old head of the agency. Dagan, who has walked with a stick since he was injured in action as a young man, led Netanyahu and a general to a briefing room.

According to sources with knowledge of Mossad, inside the briefing room were some members of a hit squad. As the man who gives final authorisation for such operations, Netanyahu was briefed on plans to kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a member of Hamas, the militant Islamic group that controls Gaza.

Mossad had received intelligence that Mabhouh was planning a trip to Dubai and they were preparing an operation to assassinate him there, off-guard in a luxury hotel. The team had already rehearsed, using a hotel in Tel Aviv as a training ground without alerting its owners.

The mission was not regarded as unduly complicated or risky, and Netanyahu gave his authorisation, in effect signing Mabhouh’s death warrant.

Typically on such occasions, the prime minister intones: “The people of Israel trust you. Good luck.”

Days later on January 19, Emirates flight EK912 took off from the Syrian capital Damascus at 10.05am. On board, as Mossad had anticipated, was Mabhouh, who was also known by the nom de guerre of Abu al-Abd. The Israelis suspected he planned to travel from Dubai to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas to arrange for an arms shipment to Gaza.

As the Airbus A330 rose into the wintry sky and headed south, Mabhouh, an athletic 49-year-old, could see the minarets of the ancient city — his home since he had been deported from Gaza by Israel more than 20 years before.

He had made the trip to Dubai several times before on Hamas business and had little reason to think that in less than 12 hours he would be dead.

From a highway below a Mossad agent watched the departure of EK912. Knowing from an informant at the airport that Mabhouh, who was travelling under an assumed name, had boarded the flight, the agent sent a message — believed to be to a pre-paid Austrian mobile phone — to the team in Dubai. Their target was on his way.

A few hours later, as the world now knows, Mabhouh was murdered in his hotel room — and the Israeli spy agency nearly got clean away. For days the death appeared to be from natural causes.

When suspicions did arise, it was only because of Dubai’s extensive system of CCTV cameras that the work of the assassination team was revealed.

The cameras recorded the hit-team’s movements, from the moment its members landed in Dubai to the moment they left. Last week their photographs were released by the Dubai police and splashed across the world’s newspapers and television screens.

Mossad is now deeply embarrassed. Its use of the identities of British, French, German and Irish nationals as cover for agents to carry out the hit has angered western governments. In the ensuing diplomatic fall-out, sources close to Mossad said yesterday that it had suspended similar operations in the Middle East, mainly because of fear that heightened security would put its agents at greater risk. Dagan’s job is also on the line.

Howver. few believe that Mossad will give up the secret war it has long waged against Israel’s enemies.

Mossad has had a reputation for ruthlessness since it hunted down the Black September terrorists who massacred 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. Time and again its vengeful arm has reached out across the Arab world and into Europe, too, smiting enemies.

Under Dagan’s leadership, such operations have increased. Dagan differs markedly from his predecessor, the London-born Ephraim Halevy, a nephew of the late writer and philosopher Isaiah Berlin.

Halevy was dubbed the “cocktail man” for his long chats with foreign diplomats. He shrank from brutal covert operations. Eventually the then prime minister, Ariel Sharon, removed him and appointed Dagan in his place.

The new chief soon began to restore Mossad’s reputation for lethal operations. The tone of his directorship is set by a photograph on the wall of his modest office in the Tel Aviv headquarters. It shows an old Jew standing on the edge of a trench. An SS officer is aiming his rifle at the old man’s head.

“This old Jew was my grandfather,” Dagan tells visitors. The picture reflects in a nutshell his philosophy of Jewish self-defence for survival. “We should be strong, use our brain, and defend ourselves so that the Holocaust will never be repeated,” he once said.

One hit he masterminded was in Damascus two years ago against Imad Mughniyeh, a founder of Hezbollah and one of the world’s most wanted terrorists. Mughniyeh was decapitated when the headrest of his car seat exploded — close to the headquarters of Syrian intelligence.

Six months later, Mossad, in co-operation with special forces, struck again at the heart of the Syrian establishment. General Mohammed Suleiman, Syria’s liaison to North Korea’s nuclear programme, was relaxing in the back garden of his villa on the Mediterranean shore.

His bodyguards were monitoring the front of the villa. Out to sea a yacht sailed slowly by. No noise was heard, but suddenly the general fell, a bullet through his head.

One of Dagan’s most recent concerns has been the rise of the Iranian threat to Israel, both directly and through its links with Hamas. It is in that context that the operation to eliminate Mabhouh should be understood.

Preparations appear to have been in train for months. When Mabhouh landed in Dubai, Mossad agents were waiting for him. They had flown in from Paris, Frankfurt, Rome and Zurich in advance using their forged passports, some based on the details of British nationals living in Israel who were unaware their identities had been stolen. The agents had also obtained credit cards in the name of the identities they had stolen.

Yesterday Dhahi Khalfan, the Dubai police chief, said investigators had found that some of the passports had been used in Dubai before. About three months ago it appears Mossad agents using the stolen identities followed Mabhouh when he travelled to Dubai and then on to China. About two months ago they followed him on another visit to Dubai.

In January, after he had landed and collected his luggage Mabhouh headed for the exit and a taxi for the short ride to the nearby Al-Bustan Rutana hotel. A European-looking woman in her early thirties waiting outside saw him leave and sent a message to the head of the team.

Dubai is a hub of international commerce and intrigue. Scores of Iranian agents are active there and its hotels are often used as meeting places for spies and covert deals. The main concern of the Mossad squad was to corner Mabhouh, alone if possible.

They divided into several teams, some for surveillance of the target and others to keep a look-out, and one for the hit. Some changed their identities as they moved about the city, putting on wigs and switching clothes.

When Mabhouh checked in to the hotel, at least one Mossad agent stood close to him at the front desk trying to overhear his room number. Then two others, dressed in tennis clothes, followed him into the lift to confirm which room he was going to.

According to an Israeli report yesterday he specifically asked for a room with no balcony, presumably for security reasons. The Mossad team booked the room opposite.

Mabhouh left the hotel in early evening, tailed by two of the Mossad team. Hamas also knows where he went and whom he met, but is not saying.

The Dubai police have not released CCTV footage showing exactly what happened next in the hotel, but the available evidence and sources point to two possibilities.

One is that while Mabhouh was out, the hit team entered his room and lay in wait. To do this they would have needed a pass key or would have had to tamper with the lock. It is known that while Mabhouh was out someone had tried to reprogramme the electronic lock on the door to his room.

However, they may have failed to gain entry. If so, the second possibility is that one of the team lured Mabhouh into opening the door after he had returned to his room. Perhaps a woman agent, pictured in CCTV footage in the hotel wearing a black wig, knocked on the door posing as a member of the hotel staff, allowing the hit team to force their way in.

Exactly how Mabhouh was killed remains unclear. The Dubai police said he was suffocated; other sources say he was injected with a drug. But at first sight there was no evidence of foul play.

When the killers left they relocked the door and left a “Please do not disturb” sign on it. Within hours the Mossad agents were flying out of the emirate to different destinations, including Paris, Hong Kong and South Africa.

Nobody suspected anything was wrong until the following day when Mabhouh’s wife called Hamas officials to ask about her husband. He wasn’t answering his mobile phone, she told them. The hotel management was alerted and the room entered.

THERE were no signs of struggle or any violence to Mabhouh, who appeared to be asleep. When he couldn’t be woken, a doctor was summoned from a nearby hospital.

In the room some medicine for high-blood pressure was found — planted by Mossad, say Israeli sources — and the doctor decided that the Palestinian had died of natural causes, possibly from a heart attack. In Gaza and Damascus 40 days of mourning began.

Mossad appeared to have got away with it, though some in Hamas had their suspicions that Mabhouh had been poisoned. They well-remembered a previous Mossad plot in 1997 in which an Israeli agent blew poison into the ear of one of its leaders on a visit to Jordan — an operation authorised by Netanyahu during a previous term as prime minister. The Hamas leader, Khaled Mashal, survived only because two agents were caught — and Jordan demanded that an antidote be handed over.

Some Palestinians also suspect that Yasser Arafat, the long-standing leader who died in 2004, was poisoned, though there has never been any evidence to prove it.

When results of Mabhouh’s post-mortem came through, they were still inconclusive. Yesterday one source claimed that burns from a stun gun were found on his body and that there were traces of a nosebleed, possibly from being smothered. However, no firm evidence of exactly how Mabhouh died, either from natural causes or foul play, emerged.

The uncertainty alone was enough for Hamas to declare that Israel had killed their man. The police investigated, CCTV images were gathered and and the affair began to unravel.

One well-informed Israeli source said: “The operative teams were very much aware of the CCTV in Dubai, but they have been astonished at the ability of the Dubai police to reconstruct and assemble all the images into one account.”

For Israel, the fallout has been considerable and the reverberations continue. The real owners of the stolen or forged passports, several of them Britons living in Israel, have complained that they were innocent victims of a murder plot.

The Mossad agents who used their names have been put on Interpol’s wanted list, and the real individuals are worried that they will now always be associated with the murder of a Hamas official.

Dubai can no longer avoid being embroiled in the Arab- Israeli conflict. It is calling for an international arrest warrant to be issued against Dagan and says it will release more information confirming that this was a Mossad killing.

In Britain there were initial suspicions that the government had been tipped off about the operation, or had even quietly condoned it. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, demanded to know when the Foreign Office had first found out that British passport holders were involved in the affair.

A spokesman for the Foreign Office insisted there was no mystery or cover-up. “Suggestions that the government had prior warning or was in some way complicit in this affair are baseless,” he said.

“The Dubai authorities told us of the role of British passports on February 15 and we were able to tell them the passports in question were fraudulent the very next day.” This account was backed up by a statement from Dubai’s police chief.

However, the broader question of Britain’s response to Israel’s activities remains unresolved.

Gordon Brown has announced an investigation by the Serious Organised Crime Agency into the identity theft, and David Miliband, the foreign secretary, is expected to address the House of Commons on the issue tomorrow.

Israel is a key ally for Britain in the Middle East and an even closer ally of the Americans. Brown and Miliband will hope that the affair will fade away, though the pro-Arab lobby will try to ensure the matter is not easily buried.

Hugo Swire, MP and chairman of the Conservative Middle East Council, said: “These allegations against the Israeli government need to be answered. This is not something that can just be swept under the carpet. You cannot conduct foreign policy at this extremely sensitive time by this sort of illegal behaviour.”

In Israel the reaction is mixed. Few shed tears over the death of one of Hamas’s top men, but there is dismay that Mossad may have damaged the country’s reputation abroad. Though in time the furore will no doubt blow over, critics of Dagan have renewed their demands for him to go.

The mastermind of Mossad may yet find himself a casualty of his own secret war.

[seemslikeadream]

Dubai hit squad may have used diplomatic passports

(Dubai Ruler's Media Office/AP)
The suspected Mossad assassination squad
James Hider, Jerusalem

The hit squad that killed a senior Hamas official in Dubai may have entered the country using diplomatic passports, senior officials in the Emirates said yesterday, calling on Britain and other European countries whose passports were forged to launch a full-scale inquiry.

“There is still information that Dubai police will not make public for the moment, especially regarding diplomatic passports” used by some of the 11-strong hit team, who used British, Irish, German and French documents to enter the emirate last month, said Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai’s police chief.

“The United Arab Emirates is deeply concerned by the fact that passports of close allies, whose nationals currently enjoy preferential visa waivers, were illegally used to commit this crime,” said Anwar Gargash, the UAE minister of state for foreign affairs.

Lt Gen Tamim said the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhuh, a founder of Hamas’ armed wing and whose death has been widely blamed on Israel’s spy agency Mossad, was “no longer a local issue, but a security issue for European countries.


His warning came after Mahmoud Zahar, a senior Hamas leader, hinted to Europe that while his militant organization – which has carried out scores of suicide bombings -- had restrained their operations to Israel in the past, complicity with Israel’s spy agency could change lead them to reconsider the policy.

Officials close to the investigation said that at least two more suspects had entered the country on Irish passports, and that some of them had made earlier scouting trips to Dubai.

It also emerged that the German passport used by the killers had not been forged but was a real document that had been obtained fraudulently from a German passport office in Cologne in 2008.

Der Spiegel magazine said it had been issued in the name of Michael Bodenheimer, an Israeli-American whose Jewish parents had fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s.

The passport was issued upon receipt of documents including Mr Bodenheimer’s grandparents’ passports. The real Michael Bodenheimer, who was born in the United States and now heads a religious school in Tel Aviv, told the magazine he had never applied for a German passport. The prosecutor’s office in Cologne has opened an investigation into the case.

In the latest twist in the complex affair, the Dubai police chief suggested that one of the slain Hamas leader’s own close associates may have leaked information on his whereabouts to his assassins, calling the unnamed mole “ the real killer.” Palestinian militant groups have often been infiltrated by Israeli intelligence in the past, and usually hand out death sentences to those caught collaborating with the Jewish state.

Hamas in turn said that al-Mabhuh, believed to have been responsible for smuggling Iranian arms to the Gaza-based militants, had committed several security breaches, including booking his ticket on the Internet and telling family members on the telephone of his movements.

“Al-Mabhuh called his family by phone before he travelled to Dubai and told them of his plan to stay in a specific hotel, and he booked his travel through the Internet. This undoubtedly created a security breach in the movements of al-Mabhuh,” said Salah Bardawil, a Hamas lawmaker.

Hamas was swift to reject Dubai’s call for the group to conduct a full internal investigation into whether one of its own people might have sold out al-Mabhuh, saying it had started its own inquires as soon as his death was discovered on January 20. Ayman Taha, a senior Hamas official, called on Dubai to form a joint investigative committee, something the emirate has so far refused.

“We have very important information which has not so far been used,” he said. “We asked the Dubai authorities to be part of the investigation, but until now there has not been a positive response.”

But the murdered militant’s own brother denied Hamas’ accusation that he might have compromised his own safety. “I am the last one who received a call from Mahmoud,” said Fayek al-Mabhuh. “He didn't tell me that he was going to Dubai and he never told any one of the family the details of his work or his movements.”

The accusations and counter-charges came after suspicion fell on Hamas’ Palestinian rivals Fatah, following the arrest by Dubai police of two former Fatah security officials from the Gaza for complicity in the hotel hit.

[seemslikeadream]

Is Israel the only suspect over Dubai death?

Mossad: the elite women who work for 'the family’
Gail Folliard, one of the women suspected of killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, follows in a long line of Mossad agents, says Gordon Thomas

By Gordon Thomas
Published: 7:30PM GMT 20 Feb 2010


A woman named as Gail Foliard, wearing a black wig over her blonde hair, seen on hotel CCTV at the time of the killing
From the moment Mahmoud al-Mabhouh checked into his suite at the Al-Bustan Rotana hotel, he became Gail Folliard’s target. Mabhouh was in Dubai to buy missiles from Iran which would then be smuggled to Gaza and launched on Israel. Gail Folliard was on business, too. The hotel’s security cameras silently observed her as she walked through the ballroom-sized lobby, around the pool area and past the eight restaurants. Ms Folliard paid for her room in cash. It was the first step in ensuring she left no trail.
The passport in Ms Folliard’s shoulder bag was an Irish one, giving her age as 26. We now know that passport was a fake – and that her lipsticked smile (right) concealed


that she was a member of kidon, the department of Mossad responsible for assassination and kidnapping. She is one of six women in the unit of 48.
Meir Amit, the director-general of Mossad in the 1960s, laid down the rules for kidon women in a document that remains in force today. It contains the following passage: “A woman has skills a man simply does not have. She knows how to listen. Pillow talk is not a problem for her. The history of modern intelligence is filled with accounts of women who have used their sex for the good of their country... It is not just sleeping with someone if required. It is to lead a man to believe you will do so in return for what he has to tell you.”
These skills are honed during the two-year course all Mossad recruits undergo at the training school, a dun-coloured building outside Tel Aviv. The women are taught how to shadow a target; how to create a dead-letter box; how to break into a hotel room. “Gail Folliard” would have been shown how to pack a gun inside her knickers; stealing passports and disguise are also on the curriculum.
The failure rate is high. Those who pass work either at Mossad’s headquarters in Tel Aviv or at one of its many overseas stations. A few are then considered for further training as kidon. The unit is based in the Negev desert, the pay £2,000 a month. Ms Folliard would have been told that joining the kidon was like joining a family and she would be protected and nurtured. In return she would serve the family in any way it asked.
Arguably the most famous female kidon was Cheryl Ben-Tov, code-named Cindy. Born in Orlando, Florida, Cheryl moved to Israel to study Hebrew and Jewish history. At 18 she fell in love with an Israeli who worked for the Internal Security Service, Shin Beth.
A year after they married, Cheryl volunteered to join Mossad. Her motivation, she later told me, was “the thrill of its mystery”.
Her training taught her, among other skills, how to construct a waterproof strip of microfilm that could be left buried in the side of a river bank. She also learnt how to change her facial appearance by inserting cotton wadding in her cheeks. She became adept at posing as a drunk and chatting up men in nightclubs, then disengaging herself outside their hotel.
With an IQ of 140, and her ideal psychological profile, Cheryl was invited to join the kidon. On the day she was trucked out to its base in the Negev, she was questioned about her sexual experience. Would she sleep with a stranger if her mission demanded it? She answered truthfully: there had been no one before her husband, but if she was convinced the success of the mission depended on it, then she would. “It would purely be sex, not love,” she explained to me.
In 2004, Cheryl joined a team of nine katsas – field intelligence officers – in London. Their task was to entrap Mordechai Vanunu, who had worked at Israeli’s top-secret nuclear facility in the Negev desert, but had fled to London to try to sell his story. Mossad had to stop him from doing so, and Cheryl was chosen as the bait to trap him.
Using her seduction skills, she “came alongside” Vanunu in Leicester Square. Their relationship quickly developed, and Vanunu suggested they spend the night together. Cheryl agreed, saying they should go to
Rome and “enjoy a few romantic days in the city of love”, as she put it to me.
Five members of the Mossad team were passengers on the flight Cheryl and Vanunu took to Rome. In the old quarter of the city, Cheryl led the way up to an apartment she had told Vanunu belonged to her sister. Already waiting inside were the Mossad katsas from the flight. They overpowered Vanunu, injecting him with a paralysing drug. Three days later he had been tranferred to Haifa in Israel. A swift trial and a life sentence in solitary confinement followed. Cheryl Ben-Tov disappeared back into her secret world.
She resigned from Mossad after the Vanunu case. It had “burned” her as an agent, she told me. Today she lives back in Orlando, with her husband and two daughters, running a real estate business.
Tzipi Livni, the head of the opposition Kadima Party in Israel, was another Mossad high-flier. She was posted to Paris as a kidon, carrying out ruthless operations against Arab terrorists. Ephraim Halevy, a former chief of Mossad, has described her as “running substantial risks to get her targets”. She resigned to launch her political career.
Nineteen hours after arriving in the Gulf state, Gail Folliard had left Dubai. In the debriefing in a safe house in Tel Aviv, a Mossad psychologist would have been present. How well did she think her disguise had worked? Had there been any moments when she thought she would abandon her mission?
Gail Folliard, now the subject of an international arrest warrant for murder, will vanish. She may undergo surgery to change her appearance. Her passport will be burned. No one – not her husband nor boyfriend nor family – will be allowed to contact her for months. It should be sufficient for them to know that she was a heroine to Mossad.

[hava1]

The descriptions of Mossad :culture" are romanticized in the same way that mafia movies fail intentionally to describe the sufferings of those involved. Otherwise, nobody would agree to work there. The battle in Israel now is to dispell the fake glory, and so the recent serious "civil rights" event here involved the refusal of two school headmasters to allow IDF officers to come and speak before kids (the "pep talk"). the Israeli chief of staff himslef reprimanded those educators, and there was a big hassle (still is). The other "civil war" is between Bar Refaeli and the IDF command...just to illustrate the point.