The Dubai Assassination

The Dubai assassination is still one of the top news in the media coverage in most countries. No wonder because new details are made public every day. With all this new information on a daily basis, the confusion is growing, so let us use “Occam’s razor” and put those facts together that are available for the moment.

It is believed that Israel’s Mossad is behind the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a former Hamas leader in January. Like I said, it is believed but there is no evidence, a fact however is, that since then Israel has neither denied nor confirmed (what would be not very smart) its involvement and was also not very supportive in regard to investigations, especially when we consider that Israeli identities were used for this assassination.

While countries like Australia, Ireland, Germany, France and Britain were outraged that the suspects used their European dualcitizenship passports to enter Dubai, Israel still remains silent and doesn’t seem to care that all suspects that were identified so far, have Israeli identities.

First, let us take a look at the Mossad. The Mossad is well known for its assassinations.

Formed in 1949, Mossad is a small but notorious intelligence agency. It developed its reputation after it discovered Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann living in Argentina in 1960 under the name of Ricardo Klement. He was captured by a team of agents and smuggled to Israel where he was executed.

After tensions increased with Arab neighbours, Israel changed tack and created the kidon – the Hebrew word for bayonet – assassination squads.

They came to the world’s attention after striking back at the terrorists who had killed 11 Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972 and later after they mistakenly murdered a Moroccan waiter in Lillehammer. Six Mossad agents, including two women, were captured by Norwegian authorities while the rest of the team fled.

The scandal forced Israeli leader Golda Meir to end these assassinations. But just five years later it was revived under orders of new Prime Minister Menachem Begin. BTW, any Mossad assassination has to be approved by the Israeli Prime Minister.

However, those who are researching the way the Mossad operates are confident that also the Dubai assassination was a Mossad operation, although the more information we get the more doubts arise.

So is former Mossad agent Rami Igra quite sure, that due to the assassins’ failure to disable CCTV cameras at key moments and their use of passports belonging to ordinary people living in Israel, the Mossad cannot be behind it. He has been quoted: “It was so stupid, it couldn’t be Israel. You don’t go over the speed limit in a place where there are going to be cameras, because you are going to be photographed. The whole thing shows that whoever did it was very unprofessional”

Also, the claim of the Dubai police, that nearly 30 persons are involved (17 of them are already convincingly tied to this assassination), are rather a proof that this operation doesn’t take the fingerprints of the Mossad.

So let us look at that what can be proved so far…

Whoever is behind this assassination knew, that this operation couldn’t take place with absolute anonymity – it is nearly impossible to operate in today’s world, without leaving some kind of electronic trace (the data generated when someone takes a flight, crosses a border, uses a credit card or makes a call) not to mention, the well known fact that cameras will be tracking most of their movements.

Indeed, the Dubai police were able to use CCTV cameras from the airport, hotels and a shopping center to trace back all kinds of “agent movements” which made it possible to establish their identities according to the passports and credit cards they used.

In this connection it is important to mention that no camera was able to track what happened to Al-Mabhouh. According to the Dubai police and mentioned by Stratfor, the selection of the room that was booked was a very intelligent move… “it was directly across the hall from Al-Mabhouh’s room, giving the team a perfect spot from which to monitor his movements. And the room was just behind the video camera for that floor while the camera was trained on the emergency stairwell exit, which allowed the assassination team to carry out the attack on his room without being filmed.”

This is not the only evidence to suggest that this operation was very well planned, there is evidence that some of the suspects were in Dubai before… and if you look at all the details it is anything but unprofessional.

Stratfor wrote in its report that “the passports  also turned out to be extremely well-made fraudulent passports that were discovered only after video surveillance prompted closer scrutiny; customs officials were unable to detect this when the operatives were arriving or departing.

And that some credit cards used by several members of the operation team were linked to a company called Payoneer based in New York. The company’s CEO ,Yuval Tal,  is a former member of Israel Defense Forces special operations (who appeared on Fox News in 2006 during the Lebanon War) and Payoneer has financial backing from a company based in Israel ….”

Other credit cards that had been used to book hotel rooms or to pay air travel, could be linked to Meta Bank, a small bank based in the US state of Iowa. A MetaBank spokeswoman told the Associated Press news agency that the bank was trying to confirm the reports.

Investigations and researches, in case of the man who used the German passport with the name “Michael Bodenheimer” indicate, that in summer 2009 a man requested a national identy card and a German passport in Cologne. According to Spiegel Online (that did some own research too) he claimed to be an Israeli citizen that moved to Germany in June.

He offered proof in form of an Israeli passport that had been issued in Tel Aviv in November 2008. As proof of his eligibility for German citizenship, he provided the marriage certificate of his parents, who had fled Germany to escape the Nazis. According to the Article 116 of the German constitution, “former citizens of Germany, and their descendants, are entitled to German citizenship.”

On June, 18^th 2009 he picked up his passport, with which he entered the UAE eight months later as a member of this operating team that killed Al-Mabhouh.

The name “Michael Bodenheimer” was never heard, neither in Cologne, nor in Liman, this little town near Tel Aviv, which he named as his birth place.

Stratfor points out that “the high level of complexity involved in this assassination, along with the smoothness with which it was carried out, is evidence that the operation was undertaken by an elite covert force, the likes of which could only be sponsored by a nation-state. The ability to conduct preliminary intelligence collection, to muster a large and coordinated team of skilled operatives, to fabricate passports to an exacting degree, to successfully exfiltrate all members of the team — all of this requires a significant and well-funded effort that” they believe, “exceeds the current capabilities of any non-state terrorist group. They found it worth noting, that the most impressive aspect of the operation was the team’s tradecraft and demeanor so that all the members of this team must have been professionals. And that, with so much time having already elapsed(assumed that the operation was sponsored by a nation-state) it would be highly improbable that any of the operatives involved will ever be caught.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

They also try to make clear that “Al-Mabhouh was hardly a likable character and as a senior Hamas military commander, arms smuggler with liaison to Iran, he was already on the terrorist watch lists in the countries that have complained about the use of fraudulent passports so that very “few would seriously want to punish Israel if there is an involvement. They point out that this public indignation is a necessary and expected reaction to save a diplomatic face, similar to the efforts of the police of Dubai and the UAE who have to save face in the Arab world….

However…  in the meantime, while  in Israel  “Mossad-support-shirts” are selled, Dubai police chief asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation for help, hoping to get financial records associated with the fraudulently issued credit cards, things like the original credit card applications, which requires a delivery address (to mail the card to), social security numbers, dates of birth, employment information, some handwriting samples and even fingerprints (if the applications were made on paper)

It is still not sure whether or not the US will help. The Emirates are a friendly country to the US and a member of Interpol. They have also been a key country used by the US administration to apply pressure on Iran, so there should be no reason why they should not help…

However

Fact is, that the widespread introduction of CCTV, biometric identification data and interconnected immigration control centres provide a very different situation than decades ago… but  this game of espionage will not go out of business because of this…and as intelligence agencies did in the past, they will simply find a way… the Dubai assassination is an example that everything is still possible even if – at first glance – it looks “ so stupid” and “unprofessional” but in the end… in this business “the end justifies the means”.

Sources: Spiegel Online, Stratfor, BBC, FAZ, AlJazeera, RadioLibertyEurope,