DUBAI: Dubai would seek the arrest of Israel’s prime minister if it found evidence intelligence service Mossad was behind the killing of a senior Hamas official, its police chief was quoted as saying in a newspaper report.
Hamas has blamed Israel for killing Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, one of its top military commanders, in a Dubai hotel last month. Israel has declined to comment.
Police in the United Arab Emirates have said they suspect a foreign “criminal gang” of killing Al-Mabhouh in his hotel room, and are looking into the possible involvement of Israel’s spy agency.
Dubai’s police chief, Dahi Khalfan Tamim, told The National daily that the head of the Israeli government would be held personally responsible if Mossad were implicated.
“Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will be the first to be wanted for justice as he would have been the one who signed the decision to kill Al-Mabhouh in Dubai. We will issue an arrest warrant against him,” he told the newspaper.
The newspaper quoted Tamim as saying Al-Mabhouh was killed using a “Mossad method,” but did not elaborate.
The police chief said Mossad “has carried out operations” previously using similar methods as those used in Al-Mabhouh’s murder.
The paper quoted police sources as saying Al-Mabhouh arrived in Dubai on Jan. 19 at 3:15 p.m., and was dead within five hours. His killers had been in the country less than 24 hours before the murder and left before the body was discovered at the luxury Al-Bustan Rotana hotel near the airport.
Al-Mabhouh was in charge of arms purchases for the Izz El-Deen Al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Hamas group. Over the years, several Hamas leaders have been killed in what Israel calls “targeted killings.”
Tamim’s comments to the newspaper reflect widespread belief that Israel assassinated Al-Mabhouh, who engineered the capture of Israeli soldiers in the 1980s during a Palestinian uprising.
Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a Gaza-based Hamas leader, said in a press statement earlier that it was possible the assassins of Al-Mabhouh had come to Dubai as part of Israeli Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau’s entourage under assumed identities, using false passports. Landau attended a renewable energy conference in the UAE last month, the first visit by an Israeli minister.
Al-Zahar has called on Arab countries maintaining diplomatic relations with Israel to respond to the incident in order to keep “the region from becoming a killing field.” Like most Arab countries, the UAE has no diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.
