Hamas chief's killers had fake UK passports

Members of a suspected hit squad blamed for the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai used fake British and Irish passports.

Police in Dubai have released details of 11 people they believe were involved in killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, all of whom were travelling on European documents.

Officials named the Britons as Michael Lawrence Barney, James Leonard Clarke, Jonathan Louis Graham, Paul John Keeley, Stephen Daniel Hodes and Melvyn Adam Mildiner. The Irish suspects were named as Gail Folliard, Evan Dennings and Kevin Daveron, and Peter Elvinger of France and Michael Bodenheimer of Germany were also named.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Dubai's attorney general, Essam al-Hemaydan, said international arrest warrants have been issued for those accused of links to the killing.

But the Foreign Office in London said the six British passports were "fraudulent" while officials in Dublin said they had "issued no passports" in the names of the three people using Irish identities.

The Foreign Office in London, which has launched an investigation, said that passports had been issued in those names but the actual documents released by Dubai were fake. It raises the possibility the suspects were using stolen British identities.

A spokesman added that the British Government had offered assistance to investigators in the city-state. Officials in Dublin likewise stated that members of the group were not travelling with bona fide documents from the republic.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The Irish Foreign Office said they had no record of passports being issued under the names released and the passport numbers appeared to be counterfeits as they have the wrong number of figures and contain no letters.

Germany's Interior Ministry also said the five-digit passport number given for the lone German suspect was too short.

Melvyn Adam Mildiner, 31, one of the men identified as a suspect, was shocked when a reporter reached him on the phone in Israel. Mr Mildiner, who holds a British and an Israeli passport, confirmed the name and the passport number matched his but said the date of birth was wrong.

He said he did not know how anybody obtained his British passport, which was issued in 2001 and never reported lost.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Dubai police chief Lieutenant General Dhahi Khalfan Tamim said the hit squad was behind the murder of al-Mabhouh, a founder member of Hamas's military wing, in a hotel near Dubai international airport on January 20.

Hamas has pointed the finger at Israel, blaming Mossad – the country's secret service – for carrying out the hit.

Lt Gen Tamim did not go as far as directly blaming Israel but said it was possible that "leaders of certain countries gave orders to their intelligence agents to kill" the Hamas man.

Four members of the alleged cell – three men thought to be British and one Irish – are claimed to have carried out the killing. Five others, including the woman, were used as spotters and in other planning roles, police said. The mastermind was a man identified as French.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

A former high-ranking Mossad official, Rami Yigal, told Israel Army Radio the assassination "does look professional". He declined to speculate on who could have carried it out but said al-Mabhouh had many enemies and was at the centre of bloody Palestinian feuds.

Related topics: