Dubai holds two over Hamas murder

Two Palestinians have been arrested over the murder of a senior Hamas figure in the United Arab Emirates last month, police have said.

The Hamas movement has blamed Israeli agents for the killing of Mahmud al-Mabhouh in a hotel room in the emirate of Dubai on January 20.

Dhafi Khalfan, Dubai’s police chief, said that he had not ruled out ”the involvement of Mossad [Israel's intelligence agency] or other parties in the assassination”, but that investigators were issuing arrest warrants for 11 suspects with European passports.

“Israel carries out a lot of assassinations in many countries, even in countries that it is allied to,” Khalfan said.

He told a news conference on Sunday that team that carried out the killing was made up of six British passport holders, three with Irish passports, including the woman, and the holders of a German and a French passport.

“This is a list of all the wanted suspects. The list will be given to the press, newspaper and the Interpol [the international police organisation],” Khalfan said.

Israeli authorities have not commented on the killing, but Israeli media have welcomed al-Mabhouh’s death.

The Jerusalem Post newspaper said that the murder was “another blow to the axis of evil”.

Murder plot

The 11 suspects were believed to have rented a room across the corridor from al-Mabhouh around the time of the murder and left Dubai shortly after, according to the police chief.

There have been conflicting reports about whether al-Mahouh was suffocated, strangled or electrocuted.

Khalfan said that the two detained Palestinians were suspected of providing logistical support to the gang.

Al-Mabhouh entered the United Arab Emirates a day before his death using a passport that did not bear his family name, Khalfan said.

“Obviously, the gang knew that he was coming to Dubai, because they knew in advance and were able to come from Europe,” he told the news conference.

Al-Mabhouh was born in the Gaza Strip, but had been living in Syria since 1989.

He is said to have engineered the capture of two Israeli soldiers during a Palestinian uprising in the 1980s and was imprisoned several times by Israeli forces.

Hamas has said he was an “important” member of Izz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, Hamas’s military wing named after a Syrian religious leader who fought British colonial forces in Palestine in the 1930s.

Aljazeera