BACKGROUND:In line with its policy on security, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement
FIVE MONTHS after a cleaner discovered the body of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his luxury Dubai hotel room, the circumstances of his death remain a mystery.
According to Dubai police, more than 30 people were involved in planning and carrying out the assassination of Mabhouh, a senior Hamas official accused by Israel of smuggling arms into Gaza.
At least 12 British and eight Irish passports were used in the operation, with the remainder coming from France, Australia and Germany.
The Dubai authorities have laid the blame squarely on Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency. In line with its policy on security and intelligence matters, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied it played any role in the murder.
The Irish Government initiated two investigations – one by the Garda and the other by the passport unit of the Department of Foreign Affairs – as soon as it had official confirmation that Irish passports had been implicated. Both inquiries drew on information provided by the United Arab Emirates government and Dubai police. An Garda also received close co-operation from police in the UK and from other police services through Interpol.
The Irish investigations found that, in contrast to the UK and Australian cases, which involved identity theft, those responsible for forging Irish passports sought to replicate valid Irish passport information. Six of the eight fake passports contained numbers that corresponded to actual Irish passports. The two remaining passports used numbers which conformed to Irish passport number format, but valid passports carrying these numbers were never issued.
As Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheál Martin said yesterday, the Government had invested heavily in making the Irish passport a “respected document . . . internationally” and in improving the security of the passport issuing process so Irish citizens could travel in safety.
“Any actions which endanger our well-earned reputation in this area require determined action to ensure there is no repetition,” the Minister said.
The Government’s decision to expel an official at the Israeli embassy in protest at the misuse of Irish passports marks yet another episode in what has turned into a protracted diplomatic fallout for Israel. The UK and Australia have already sent Israeli embassy officials packing over the use of British and Australian documentation by the suspected assassins.
At the weekend it emerged that Germany had requested the extradition of an alleged Mossad officer arrested in Poland in connection with Mabhouh’s killing. Prosecutors say the man, named Uri Brodsky, is suspected of being involved in illegally obtaining a German passport.
The issue of forging passports aside, the question of who killed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh shows little sign of being answered any time soon.