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Murder mystery in the Middle East

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Last month, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a military commander of the Palestinian group Hamas, was killed in Dubai. Hamas blamed Israel. This week, Dubai police released names, photos, and passport numbers of 11 members of an alleged hit-squad. Dubai said they carried European passports, but most of the identities appear to have been stolen. And at least seven of those identities matched up with Israeli citizens. We hear from Ronen Bergman, the security and intelligence correspondent for the Israeli newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth.

• BBC coverage of this story
• BBC history of Israeli covert killing

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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark and this is The World.  A murder mystery is playing out in the Middle East.  The victim was a military commander of the Palestinian group, Hamas.  Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in Dubai last month. Hamas blamed Israel.  This week, Dubai police released names, photos, and passport numbers of eleven members of an alleged hit squad.  Dubai says they carried European passports, but most of the identities appear to have been stolen.  And, at least seven matched up with Israeli citizens. Ronen Bergman is the security and intelligence correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.  He’s on the line with us from Jerusalem.  Mr. Bergman, first of all who was Mahmoud al-Mabhouh and who might have wanted him dead?

RONEN BERGMAN: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was a senior Hamas field operative.  In as early as 1987 he kidnapped and murdered two Israeli soldiers.  That’s according to his own testimony to Al Jazirah [PH] not long ago.  Then he fled the territories knowing that he’s on the most wanted list.  And, became a field operative for Hamas focusing on the funneling of money and resources from rich communities in the United States and in Europe, rich Muslim communities, to Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank.  Later on, when Hamas became much closer to Iran, he was a king pin in the shipment of arms, sophisticated technology from Tehran to Gaza.  So I don’t know who killed him.  But, I can say that from the point of view of Israel to eliminate such a person is not just a retaliation, but also part of the ongoing secret war between Israel on one hand and what is deemed by Israel as the radical front: Iran, Syria, Hamas and Sistela [PH] on the other.

CLARK: What are Israel officials saying about this incident?

BERGMAN: Israeli officials denied any sort of Israeli involvement in the case, and one former veteran of Mossad, someone called Raffi Atan [PH] said that this is a very sophisticated game trying to frame Israel for being involved in something that it was not.

CLARK: For its part, the British government wants a full investigation into the plot.  It turns out the identity of British citizens might have been stolen by Mahmoud’s killers.  Some Israeli commentators are calling for the head of the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, to resign.  So if the killing was indeed carried out by Israeli intelligence, Ronen Bergman, was it a botched operation?

BERGMAN: I would say this. If the person who sent the perpetrators took into account the price that they or the State of Israel, if the State of Israel was behind it, might pay, the price that is an international diplomatic blunder that you just mentioned, or the exposure of the use of stolen identities.  If all this was taken into account, and it was decided that it’s worthwhile doing this in return for a one-way ticket to the sky to the other world to al-Mabhouh [PH] then this is a success.  And al-Mabhouh is killed and the perpetrators are long gone and the Dubai police are chasing the wind.  They will never be able to catch them.

However, if it was not clear how capable and how sophisticated the Dubai police are, then this calls for a very serious examination of the whole thing. And I would say that we are also witnessing the end of an era, the era in which you could perform a traceless assassination is over.  And everything now leaves a mark, an electronic mark or the surveillance camera’s mark.  The footage that was released by the Dubai police is going to be the leading lesson in all intelligence courses around the world.  Because any intelligence agency that would like to perform a noisy operation like an assassination, now would have to reconsider and re-plan and build a whole strategy of new modus operandi.

CLARK: Ronen Bergman is the Security and Intelligence Correspondent for the Israel Newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.  Thank you very much.

BERGMAN: Thank you very much.

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