At the beginning of the new year in 2010, the "Dubai Gate" assassination once again brought the Mossad into the focus of world public opinion.
The Emirate of Dubai is the second largest emirate in the United Arab Emirates and is located at the throat of access to the inner gulf of the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf.
Dubai is the second largest city in the United Arab Emirates, located in the middle of the Arabian Peninsula, the southern shore of the Arabian Gulf, is the center of the Gulf region, known as the "Pearl of the Gulf", in the past 20 years, Dubai has built a series of modern supporting infrastructure using "petrodollar", making Dubai synonymous with luxury.
This scenic Bay city is positioned as the "leisure capital" of the Arab world. However, behind this glitz, there will always be many shady deeds.
On January 20, 2010, Mahmoud Ahmed, a senior official of the Palestinian organization "Hamas", was appointed to the throne. Mabahuh's assassination at the Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai became a major news sensation around the world.
Born in the Jebaliya refugee camp in Gaza, Mabahuh, 50, was one of the founders of the Hamas military organization Qassan Brigades.
He settled in Syria beginning in 1989, and in the 1980s, Mabahuh orchestrated the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and a series of attacks against Israel, becoming the target of the Mossads.
For these reasons, Israel became the main suspect after Mabahuh's assassination.
Although the truth was once elusive, CCTV surveillance at the Bustan Rotana Hotel and autopsy reports from the Dubai police showed that the suspects were likely to have used poison injections or electric shocks to fake Mabahuh's death as a false impression of a heart attack, and the usual assassination method used by the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was to inject drugs or suffocate the other party.
Later, the Dubai police and relevant departments preliminarily restored the entire process of this "assassination gate" on the basis of relevant information.
One day in early January 2010, two brand new black Audi A6 sedans were parked on a hill on a northern outskirts of the Israeli port city of Tel Aviv, behind which was a small, inconspicuous gray building that was the headquarters of Israel's secret intelligence agency, the Mossad.
After the car stopped, first an Israeli military officer and a staff member of the prime minister's office got out of the car and stood next to the car, and then out of the car was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu stepped out of the car and waited with Mel waiting by the door. Dagan shook hands and greeted him. Mossad Commissioner Mel. Dagan, who was 64 and still refreshed, shook hands with the prime minister with a cane in his hand, and hurriedly took Netanyahu and another officer indoors.
At this time, in a small office at the Mossad headquarters, a group of Mossad agents were sitting, who were preparing to assassinate Mabahuh's assassination team members.
They were having a meeting while waiting for the prime minister to arrive, and Netanyahu, accompanied by Dagan, walked in and greeted the agents politely, and the meeting continued.
The entire meeting did not last long, and finally Netanyahu made up his mind to approve the world-shocking assassination plan, agreeing that the Mossad would immediately send agents to Dubai to assassinate the senior commander of the Palestinian "Hamas", Mahmoud. Mabahuh.
At the end of the meeting, Netanyahu said in a deep voice to all those present: "The people of Israel trust you and wish you good luck." ”
A few days later, on January 19, 2010, Emirates Flight EK912 took off from the Syrian capital Damascus Airport, on which Mabahuh was, with no bodyguards and no retinue, always alone, in his usual style.
Mabahuh's actions have always been cautious and confidential, but this time he made a fatal mistake, at the airport, he used his cell phone to call his wife.
It was this detail that allowed the Mossad agent, who had long been lurking at the airport, to grasp his whereabouts on his way to Dubai, and to know that he had stayed in the five-star hotel called Bustan Rotana after arriving in Dubai, and even knew the number of the room where he was staying.
According to the relevant Palestinian authorities afterwards, Mabahuh went to Dubai this time not for tourism, nor for fun, but to negotiate an arms deal for Hamas.
After flight EK912 took off, it flew south, and the Mossad agent lurking at Damascus airport immediately sent a message in code: the target was on its way to Dubai.
It was the Mossad assassination team that received the message, and by this time all 11 members had arrived in Dubai.
A few days ago, they used forged European passports to travel to Paris, Frankfurt, Rome and Zurich, and then flew from those cities to the beautiful city of Dubai.
Of the 11 fake passports, 6 were concocted by stealing British citizenship from expatriates living in Israel, while 3 of the remaining 5 were Irish, 1 French and 1 German. With the exception of 6 British passports, the remaining 5 passports are forged.
The names and numbers of the passports held by the agents belonged to Europeans, but they were covered with pictures of themselves.
After arriving in Dubai, the assassination team stayed at the hotels near Dubai International Airport, including The Bustan Rotana Hotel.
As before each operation, they found a hotel in the local area and conducted rigorous simulation training in the room, but the person in charge of the hotel and the waiters were completely unaware of it, thinking that they were playing some kind of interesting game.
The leader of the assassination was a French passport whose pseudonym was Peter. Elvange, and another named Gayle. The women of Foleyard, she is very striking among all the published female suspects.
Gayle was one of only 6 female agents among the 48 members of the most elite "Shortsword" group in the Mossad, and she was using an Irish passport at the time.
Surveillance footage of the hotel released by Dubai police afterwards showed that the actions taken by the assassination team were "very professional".
Throughout the assassination operation, they changed their hotels several times, changing their disguises from time to time, including wearing false beards, wigs, etc., and the members in charge of Wangfeng dangled in pairs in the hotel lobby, but they did not stay at each location for a long time, in addition, they always paid only in cash.
That's named Gail. Foleyard's female agent went straight to dubai airport, where she was going to "pick up" Mabahuh.
As soon as Mabahuh got off the plane, Gail kept an eye on him, and after Mabahuh took his luggage, walked out of the airport gate and intercepted the taxi to the hotel, she informed the head of the Dubai Special Agents.
According to the prior deployment, the special agent team all disguised as tourists, divided into five teams, four teams responsible for surveillance, one team responsible for assassination, when Mabahuh arrived at the hotel to register, at least one person stood near him to eavesdrop on the room number, and the other two agents in tennis sportswear took the same elevator with him, determined the room number of his stay, and then booked the opposite room.
During the assassination, Foleyard and another member of the Irish passport used "Kevin. Daphrohn was "in charge of looking at the wind on the second floor of the hotel.
That afternoon, both men changed their hotels and dressed up as hotel staff, with the bald Kevin wearing a dark wig and glasses, while Foleyard took off his blonde wig to reveal his black hair.
Throughout the operation, the 11 members of the assassination team were very cautious and chose to use sophisticated short-range communications equipment in order to coordinate their respective operations in order to track the targets of the assassination. Despite this, Dubai police traced that members of the assassination squad had used three mobile phones to communicate closely with four members of the Austrian command by phone and text message.
At 3:25 p.m. on the 19th, under the close attention of the members of the assassination team, Mabahuh checked in at the Bustan Rotana Hotel, and as usual, Mabahuh took some precautions, he chose a room without a balcony, and locked the windows.
Upon arrival at the hotel, he also stored the box containing the documents in the hotel's safe.
However, Mabahuh did not notice that when he took the elevator to the second floor, two men followed him into the elevator, one of them was short and fat, with a small mustache, and the other was a little taller.
Both men, dressed in sportswear and carrying tennis rackets, look no different from other European tourists who come to Dubai to enjoy the winter sunshine.
After exiting the elevator, Mabahuh was escorted by the hotel attendants to room 230. Behind him, the tall man quietly followed through the corridor, jotting down Mabahuh's room number, as well as room 237 opposite, an anomaly that Mabahuch did not notice at all.
The tall man in charge of the tracking then informed the members of the command in the background of the room number where Mabahuh was staying, as well as the room number opposite, who in turn told Herwange, who was still "lurking" near the Bustan Rotana Hotel by phone.
Less than an hour before Mabahuh's check-in, the assassination team had confirmed that Room 237 was uninhabited and had booked it by phone. Subsequently, 7 members of the assassination team entered the room one after another and began to wait for the opportunity to assassinate their targets. In the following hours, Room 237 became a temporary "supply depot" for the assassination team.
Although there were no witnesses, the hotel's surveillance footage faithfully documented what happened in the hours that followed.
Taking advantage of Mabahuh's brief departure from the hotel to meet a connector, the four burly assassins quickly made their way to Room 237.
Perhaps for architectural reasons, there were no surveillance cameras in place to capture the door to Room 230, where Mabahuh lived. As a result, there is no video showing how the assassination team entered Room 230.
Surveillance footage from the hotel showed that around 8 a.m., the assassins tried to change the door lock of Mabahuh's room, while Kevin, who was in charge of the wind in the lobby on the second floor, drew a guest who took the elevator to the second floor to buy time for his accomplices.
At 8:24 p.m., Mabahuh returned to the hotel, unaware that by this time all his assassins had been in place.
At 8:46, less than 20 minutes after Mabahuh returned to the hotel, surveillance cameras captured four assassins leaving the second floor of the hotel, followed by the watchmen who had been in Room 237, followed by the surveillance team in the hotel lobby.
Apparently, the assassination team also arranged the closure of the operation very carefully.
Within two hours, Kevin and Foleyard had boarded a plane to Paris, while the other members of the assassination squad had flown through Europe to Hong Kong, South Africa and other places.
It wasn't until 1:30 p.m. the next day that Mabahuh was found dead from a leak in his room, when police found no signs of a forced break into the hotel, and Mabahuh was initially convicted of dying of a heart attack.
However, subsequent autopsies found marks of electric shocks behind both sides of Mabahuh's ears, bleeding from his nose and damaged teeth.
The forensic doctor also found that there was blood on the other pillow next to the deceased, and it was presumed that the killer had covered the nose and mouth of the deceased with a pillow and suffocated him.
Combined with the hotel's surveillance footage, it was only at this time that dubai police believed it was an assassination.
On February 15, police in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, announced that 11 mysterious agents holding passports from European countries were the real perpetrators of the assassination of the Hamas leader, and released the photos, names and passport numbers of the agents.
However, there are divergent views on the exact cause of Mabahuh's death, and disagreements are that the police and forensic doctors have allegedly not found Mabahuh suffering from heart disease. After a blood sample from Mabahuch was sent to Paris, France, for analysis and testing, the inspectors found a toxic substance.
The militant group Hamas subsequently claimed that the assassins injected poison into Mabahuh's body and caused him to die of a sudden heart attack.
And Mabahuh's younger brother Fayyad. Mabuho said Mabahuh was "killed by an electrical shock that was held to his head."
Mabahuh's body was buried in a Palestinian refugee camp near the Syrian capital Damascus.
After the Mabahuh case, Hamas denounced the Mossad as the culprit in the assassination.
Subsequently, Dubai released a video of the hotel, which clearly reproduced the scene at that time, which also made the assassination the first assassination in the history of the Mossad to be monitored and recorded, known as the biggest failure in the history of the Mossad.
On 18 February, the International Criminal Police Organization issued a Red Notice to hunt down and assassinate the leader of the Hamas military organization, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 11 suspects in Mabahuh.
The UAE police said on the same day that the assassination was almost certainly carried out by Israeli intelligence agencies, and the incident was like a fuse, rekindling the flame of hatred between Palestine and Israel and laying the hidden danger of new conflicts between the two sides.
Dubai police did not release footage of how Mossad agents murdered Mabahuh, and there are two inferences:
One is that while Mabahuh is out, Mossad agents sneak into the room and wait for him to return to carry out the murder. But in this case, they will have to smoothly pass through the electronic lock of the room, which is the biggest difficulty.
The second possibility is that the Mossad agent pretended to be a hotel worker to induce Mabahuh to open the door, and after the agent succeeded, he left a "Do Not Disturb" sign at the door of the hotel room.
Mabahuh has been very careful when he enters Dubai with a fake passport and deliberately selects a room with sealed windows and no balcony to prevent others from sneaking in. He hadn't even taken a sip of water during his time at the hotel, fearing that someone would poison him in the water. However, he never imagined that for the last 6 hours of his life, agents would be watching him by his side.
The "Dubai Gate" shocked the whole world. Dubai police say reality shows that israeli intelligence agency Mossad was responsible for Mabahuh's murder.
While Israel condemns this argument as baseless, it is undeniable that the assassinations have turned into an international diplomatic dispute. In retaliation for the Mossad assassination of Mabahukh, Hamas has repeatedly issued warnings to go to war with Israel outside of Palestine.
Dubai Police Chief Chahi. Khalfan said: "[The assassination] may have been carried out by Mossad agents... But it does not rule out the assassination of Mabahuh by other groups. Seven or more suspects, who were involved in the assassination, held passports from different European countries. Declining to speak of specific countries, Halefan said: "We are now in contact with the governments of these countries to investigate the authenticity of passports." ”
Since the suspects used passports issued by the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Germany, Australia and Austria at the time of their crimes, all relevant countries required Israel to account for the problem of passport fraud.
In the past, the Israeli intelligence agency, the Mossad, often sent intelligence officers with dual citizenship or fake passports to carry out assassination operations, and this time it is naturally difficult to get rid of the suspicion of "repeating the same trick".
Britain and Ireland summoned the Israeli ambassadors one after another after the incident, demanding that Israel must cooperate with international investigations and explain the origin of passports.
British Foreign Minister Miliband said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown had launched an investigation into the matter and hoped that Israel would cooperate with Britain. Irish Foreign Minister Martin also said that any act that undermines the credibility of the Irish passport will be taken seriously by Ireland.
German Foreign Minister Westweller said there was intelligence that Germany would be forced to investigate Mabahuch's death.
On February 25, Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith urgently summoned the Israeli ambassador to Australia in a tough tone.
"Our preliminary investigation reveals that this is a serious incident of misuse of Australian passports through forgery or identity theft, and we have not yet reached a conclusion, but I have made it clear to the Ambassador of Israel that if the findings of the investigation show that the Australian passports involved in the assassination case were forged at the official behest of Israel or with the permission of the Government of Israel, Australia would consider this to be an unfriendly move," Smith said after the meeting. "World opinion is unanimously pointing to Israel.
French Foreign Minister Kouchner denounced Mossad's suspected involvement in the Mabahuh assassination after the Dubai police released new evidence, while also strongly calling on EU countries to support the independent establishment of Palestine.
In addition, because the credit card held by the suspects came from the United States, although they used all cash in Dubai, the ticket to Dubai was purchased with a credit card, which exposed a lot of their information, and the US media disclosed that the US side is likely to intervene in further investigation of the case on this ground.
Austria was also involved in the incident, and it is reported that the mobile phone cards used by the suspects were from Austria.
The position of The European countries has undoubtedly made Israel's international situation quite embarrassing.
Intimidated by public pressure, the Mossad announced a temporary suspension of all espionage in the Middle East, mainly because of fear that the safety of its agents could no longer be guaranteed.
Still, few believe that the spy agency, which dared to argue with the CIA, would disappear as a result.