Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim said he will ask state prosecutors to issue warrants to arrest Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for eliminating Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last January. He also said that Meir Dagan, head of the Mossad, should be brought into custody.
His request comes one month after he warned that the Prime Minister might be guilty if it was discovered that Israel has been behind the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh at a Dubai hotel in January.
However, Hamas claimed on Tuesday that Jordanian and Egyptian spies also were involved in the operation. The terrorist organization told the London-based Al Quds al-Arabi newspaper that the two Arab countries, which have diplomatic relations with Israel, were worried about Mabhouh’s possession of sensitive information, some of it concerning Iran.
Dubai police since then have said they are fairly sure that Mossad agents carried out the counterterrorist operation with identity theft for the use of false passports, some of them faked as diplomatic documents.
Tamim said he is “almost certain" Israel was involved in the assassination of Mabhouh, a Hamas co-founder who was responsible for the kidnap-murder of two Israeli soldiers and who reportedly was in Dubai on a weapons-buying visit.
Dubai also wants the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate charges that MetaBank, a regional American bank, issued credit cards to the suspects, who used them to buy plane tickets and rent hotel rooms in Dubai.
Quoting Dubai police, Dubai’s National newspaper reported, "Thirteen of the 27 suspects used prepaid MasterCards issued by MetaBank.”
Police in Dubai have reasoned that the method by which Mabhouh (pictured) was killed is similar to former tactics used by the Mossad, Israel’s secret international intelligence agency. The Mossad has not commented on the Dubai operation and usually does not deny or confirm reports of counterterrorist maneuvers.
Mabhouh was drugged and suffocated “so that it would seem that his death was natural,” according to police in Dubai, although previous reports have said an electronic device blew up in his face.
Abdul Aziz Abdullah Al Ghurair, the speaker of the United Arab Emirates Federal National Council said that the assassination of Mabhouh was a “terrorist act in the territory of a sovereign state.”