Israel assassinates Hamas commander in Dubai

[MikeWB]

Israel 'assassinates' Hamas commander in Dubai
Hamas has threatened vengeance after it accused Israel of assassinating a leading member of its military wing in Dubai.
 
By Adrian Blomfield in Jerusalem
Published: 4:22PM GMT 29 Jan 2010
Raising the prospect of renewed Palestinian-Israeli violence, the Islamist movement promised to retaliate for the alleged killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
Described as one of the founders of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, Mr Mabhouh was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20.
 
Although a Palestinian news agency reported that the militant had died of cancer, security officials in the Emirate were quoted as saying that his body showed signs of a violent death.

In line with official policy, there was no response from Israel or its overseas intelligence agency Mossad, which has carried out a number of overseas assassinations in the past.

Police in Dubai said that they have identified several "European passport holders" as suspects - travel to Dubai is prohibited for Israeli passport holders - and that preliminary investigations indicated he was murdered by "a professional criminal gang".

Mabhouh is certainly the type of militant that Israel would have had in its sights.

According to Hamas, he was behind the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989 and is said to have played a leading role in bypassing an Israeli military blockade to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip, which has been under Hamas control since 2007.
Mabhouh had been in Dubai for three days. Although he slept with a chair under the handle of his door, his assassins managed to break in.
His brother Fayeq said: "The first results of a joint investigation by Hamas and the Emirates show he was killed by an electrical appliance that was held to his head.

"He was then strangled with pieces of cloth."

Hamas said it delayed announcing Mabhouh's death while it tried to catch his assassins and waited for forensic evidence.
Mabhouh had been living in Syria, where the Hamas political leadership is based, since 1989.

As several thousand mourners gathered at his funeral in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk on the edge of Damascus on Friday, Khaled Meshaal, the political leader of Hamas, promised revenge.

"I say to you Zionists: Do not rejoice," he said. "You killed him but his sons will fight you. God already took our leaders and loved ones, but resistance goes on. Palestine is a blessed land. It will not remain patient."

Last March, Sulim Yamadayev, a former Chechen rebel, was shot dead in a Dubai underground parking lot.