A spy novel-worthy police narrative about the slaying of a Hamas commander brought uneasy questions for Dubai authorities on Tuesday as their account of a crack hit squad from Europe ran into challenges from Britain, Ireland and Germany.
At least four people who live in Israel share names with suspects identified by Dubai police investigating the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Three of the four said they were not the people whose photos were made public by Dubai; a daughter of the fourth said the allegations were a mistake.
Even so, the purported link to Israel was likely to encourage Hamas and others to press their claims that the Mossad secret service masterminded the slaying.
Another twist added to the intrigue. Officials outside Dubai said at least two Palestinians linked to the case were in Dubai custody, leaving Hamas and its Western-backed Palestinian rivals, Fatah, trading bitter accusations.
Dubai authorities described an 11-member team that swooped into the Gulf city-state last month on a mission to kill al-Mabhouh and then fanned out with clockwork precision to Europe, Asia and South Africa in less than 24 hours.
Dubai’s police chief, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, ran through the details at a news conference on Monday, describing suspects who donned fake beards or wigs and shadowed al-Mabhouh so closely they even rode in the same elevator with him at a luxury hotel.
The wanted list was topped by an alleged mastermind carrying a French passport and others traveling on European passports: six British, three Irish and a German.
But it quickly came under dispute.
Ireland said three suspects’ names do not appear on any passport registry. Britain and Germany said the passport details cited by Dubai do not appear genuine. The consul-general of France in Dubai, Nada Yafi, declined to comment on the case.
One of the British suspects — identified as Melvyn Adam Mildiner — said the passport photo on the Dubai wanted flier is not him but the passport number was correct.
“Wow, I didn’t know that [the number] was out. That’s horrid,” said Mildiner, who has dual British-Israeli citizenship and was reached by phone in Israel.
“That is a bit bizarre,” he said. “I have never been to Dubai.”
At least three other people with the same names as the alleged suspects — identified by Dubai police as Britons Paul John Keeley and Stephen Daniel Hodes, and German passport holder Michael Bodenheimer — live in Israel, according to Israel’s Channel 2 TV.
Keeley and Hodes denied any link to the slaying.
“I have never been to Dubai. I don’t know what is happening. I am simply afraid,” Hodes said.
Both Hodes and Keeley said the passport photos distributed by Dubai police were not theirs.
Channel 2 reached Bodenheimer’s daughter, who called the Dubai allegations a “mistake.”
Hamas has repeatedly accused Israel’s Mossad secret service of masterminding the slaying and has vowed revenge.
A former high-ranking Mossad official, Rami Igra, told Israel Army Radio the assassination “does look professional,” but it “doesn’t look like an Israeli operation” because of the apparent sloppiness, including allowing members to be videotaped by security cameras.
Other elements also brought added scrutiny on Dubai, including how investigators pieced together the evidence or why such an apparently well-planned operation would overlook the cameras.
It all adds up to something far less definitive than Tamim’s presentation, which included video surveillance clips of both the alleged killers and al-Mabhouh. His body was found on Jan. 20 in room 230 at the Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel near Dubai’s international airport.
Dubai’s attorney general, Essam al-Hemaydan, said on Tuesday that international arrest warrants have been issued for those accused of links to the slaying. Officials said they would seek help from Interpol.
But Dubai’s wanted list appears to have major holes.
In Dublin, Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs said it could not find the three alleged Irish suspects in passport records and the numbers listed were counterfeit because they have the wrong number of digits and contain no letters.
“Ireland has issued no passports in those names,” the department said in a statement.
Germany’s Interior Ministry also said the five-digit passport number given for the German suspect is too short and lacks the letters that now appear on its passports.
A spokesman for Britain’s Foreign Office said it appears the British passports cited by Dubai were “fraudulent” and officials have opened an inquiry.
Dubai officials did not return calls for comment.
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