Britain has refused to allow Israel’s Mossad secret service to send a representative back to the country’s London embassy following the row over the killing of a member of Hamas by agents using forged UK passports.
Israel’s Yediot Aharonot newspaper reported on Tuesday that the UK Foreign Office was digging in its heels because Israel was refusing to commit itself not to misuse British passports in future clandestine operations.
Neither Britain nor Israel gave any details of the embassy official who was ordered to leave the country in March after an investigation by the UK Serious Organized Crime Agency showed that Mossad was behind the passport theft, but the official was understood to be an intelligence officer who worked as official liaison with Britain’s intelligence service, MI6.
There was no suggestion the officer was personally involved in the passports affair.
Israel has never admitted any role in February’s Dubai assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was described as a key figure in smuggling Iranian weapons into the Gaza Strip on behalf of the Palestinian Islamist movement. It has abstained from signing any material that might be construed as a confession.
Britain had made clear in public statements and private meetings with the Israelis that it expected formal guarantees that there would be no repeat of the passport cloning. The real documents belonged to Britons living in Israel.
Forged or stolen Irish, Australian, French and German passports were also used by the hit squad, whose operation — including the use of elaborate disguises — was extensively recorded by closed-circuit TV cameras in the emirate.
Israel conspicuously refrained from retaliating for the expulsion, apparently accepting that it was no more than a slap on the wrist before a return to business as usual.
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