A Mossad hit backfires… again

Source: Sydney Morning Herald 20 Feb. 2010
The author, Paul McGeough, is the author of 'Kill Khalid: Mossad's Failed Hit … And The Rise Of Hamas' (Allen & Unwin).
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THAT same old feeling for Benjamin Netanyahu must be excruciating. And it is probably cold comfort for the Israeli Prime Minister that his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, is likely to suffer along with him.
When Netanyahu last was his nation's leader, Mossad served up a dish of malodorous failure when it bungled the attempted assassination of a future leader of Hamas. That was in 1997, when the spy agency's plan to inject a mysterious poison into Khalid Mishal's ear turned to farce in the streets of Amman in Jordan.
Twelve years on, Netanyahu has again let Mossad loose and as a result he now presides over a diplomatic and PR nightmare in the wake of an otherwise successful hit on another senior Hamas figure who the Israelis claim was about to close an arms deal in the United Arab Emirates.
As is often the case in the Middle East, this one has percolated slowly - the body of the arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found in Room 230 of the plush Al Bustan Rotana Hotel on January 20.
But it was not until this week - with Mabhouh long in the grave and seemingly forgotten in the wider world - that the whole business erupted as a media sensation for Netanyahu.
Had Mossad's indiscretion been to offend just the Dubai sheikhs, already on their knees financially, Israel might have fobbed them off - possibly enlisting Washington to back-channel a half-hearted apology.
But in an operation that almost certainly required a personal sign-off by Netanyahu, Israel has given deep offence in London, Dublin, Paris and Berlin - because the Mossad team used these governments' passports as cover for its hitmen in Dubai.
But this story has more. The passport abuse is the cause of official offence in the capitals of these robust democracies - where opposition politicians, pressure groups and the media routinely put the squeeze on governments to help them overcome any reluctance to investigate such matters.
The capturing of virtually every move by the Mossad team on the emirate's ubiquitous closed-circuit TV cameras has made this an electrifying story around the world. Their antics at Dubai airport; at the hotel - some of them entering and leaving the room in which they killed the Hamas man; and Monty Pythonesque moments as others darted into rest rooms to emerge minutes later in new wig and/or beard disguises have provided near-voyeuristic images to go with an otherwise po-faced yarn about passport abuse.
And just to kick along the Israelis' sense of embarrassment, those damnable Dubaians have cleverly taken their mountain of CCTV footage and edited it down to a 27-minute clip so crisp that it warms the cockles of the hearts of editors at newsdesks around the globe.
Therein lies the silliness of the Mossad planners. Had they had just half an ear to the wall-to-wall coverage of a celebrated murder in Dubai - when an Egyptian billionaire had his lover, the Lebanese singer Suzanne Tamim, eliminated in 2008 - they would have been aware that local authorities had cracked the case by falling back on the same CCTV cameras that they used to piece together Mossad's madness.
Back in 1997, when Mossad tried to take down Khalid Mishal, who today heads Hamas, King Hussein of Jordan had Netanyahu firmly by the cojones because one of Mishal's quick-witted bodyguards managed to capture two of the Mossad agents - thereby forcing Israel to trade prisoners. Netanyahu's humiliation was complete when the then US president, Bill Clinton, forced him to hand over samples of the poison and an antidote to Jordanian doctors fighting to save Mishal's life.
In the case of the January visit to Dubai by Mossad, this sense of acute embarrassment at the capture of one's associates may fall to Mahmoud Abbas, the head of Fatah, Hamas's arch-rival in the contest for Palestinian hearts and minds, and who is buttressed as head of the Palestinian Authority by the US and Israel.
Details remain sketchy but Jordanian officials have delivered to their Dubai counterparts two Palestinians who reportedly had fled to Amman from Dubai in January after helping the Mossad team that murdered the Hamas arms dealer. In previous incarnations, both are said to have served in Abbas's Fatah-dominated security forces in Gaza, where their duty was to wrong-foot and nobble Hamas.
It is par for the course for Abbas's critics to ridicule the extent to which he is propped up by the US and Israel, helping to manage the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. But things could become very ugly for Abbas and Fatah if, as a result of events in Dubai, he is accused of collaborating with Israel in the killing of a Hamas leader who, if only because of the manner of his parting, will be revered as a true soldier for Palestine.
One of the admirable performances in all these curious circumstances is the performance of the Dubai authorities. They were entitled to be affronted by the behaviour of the Israelis, but they waited for a full month before announcing on Thursday that they were 99 per cent certain in their belief that Mossad dumped this mess on their doorstep.

Hamas death in Dubai: Details of suspects released

Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Chief of Dubai Police displaying pictures of the 11 wanted suspects
Source: Bloomberg, Gulf News

Photo: WAM
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Dubai Public Prosecution issued international arrest warrants for all suspects involved in the murder of a senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, last month.
“The United Arab Emirates has international judicial cooperation with most of the world’s countries, allowing it to seek their extradition wherever they may be captured,” Attorney General Essam Essa al-Humaidan wrote in an e-mailed statement today.
Dubai police on Feb. 15 released names and photographs of 11 suspects they say took part in al-Mabhouh’s murder. Two Palestinians were detained in connection with the killing, Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim said at a press conference yesterday. The 11 suspects included six British passport holders, three Irish, one German and one of French nationality, Tamim said. Dubai will submit their names to Interpol for arrest warrants, he said.
Hamas spokesman Ayman Taha told Al Arabiya television today that the French Foreign Ministry contacted the organization and said the French passport used by one of the suspects was forged.
Al-Mabhouh, a founder of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the Islamic Hamas movement, arrived in Dubai on Jan. 19 and his body was found in his hotel there the following day. Police believe he died of suffocation, although they have not ruled out “electric shock,” Tamim said. Further tests are being conducted, he said.
Hamas has accused Israel’s Mossad spy agency of being behind the killing. The Israeli government, which has no diplomatic relations with the U.A.E., had no comment on the matter. Tamim said that Dubai has not ruled out any possibility in al-Mabhouh’s death.
Israel accused al-Mabhouh of being behind the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip in 1988. Most of those alleged to have been involved in the soldiers’ deaths have since been detained or killed by Israel, including Hamas founder and spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who died in an Israeli strike in 2004.

Dead -v- Alive: A new grey area?

Often we face situations where there are grey areas, where there's no definitive answer, where there's uncertainty or different interpretations, but the question of being dead -v- being alive has been considered pretty much non-negotiable. Until now. This opening paragraph from today's 7Days in Dubai must be candidate for some sort of award:

"A Chechen warlord is still alive two months after he was murdered outside a Dubai apartment block, his brother has claimed."

Its so strange. Maybe an nominee for the Darwin Awards?

Whodunnit? Dubai Police Chief tells.

Adam Delimkhanov, a top Chechen leader, is the mastermind behind the assassination of 36-year-old Chechen Sulim Yamadayev, said Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai Police chief, on Sunday. Delimkhanov is Chechnya’s representative to the Russian State Duma and a close associate of Chechnya’s pro-Moscow President, Ramzan Kadyrov.

Yamadayev, an opponent to the Moscow-backed leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead at Dubai's Jumeirah Beach Residence recently. There were six people involved in the attack and two of them, including an Iranian and a Tajik, have been arrested; four have escaped from the country, said the police chief.

The police have alerted the Interpol to arrest the absconding suspects, including the top Chechen leader, said Lieutenant General Dahi.

The Assassination: Part 3

Despite the BBC report to the contrary, according to today's issue of "7 Days":
A former Russian army commander from Chechnya shot in Dubai is “dead and buried”, a Russian senator said yesterday, after uncertainty over whether he had been killed.

Ziad Spassibi who represents Chechnya in Russia’s upper house of parliament said: “He was buried on Monday in the Al Quoz cemetery in Dubai.“This information is from official channels in the United Arab Emirates,” he added. Sulim Yamadayev, a bitter foe of Chechen leader Ramzam Kadyrov, was shot in a car park on Saturday.

Radio Free Europe's webpage reports:
Russian Consul Sergei Krasnogor said relatives confirmed that the dead man was Yamadayev, a prominent foe of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov. Krasnogor later stressed to RFE/RL's Russian Service that he had seen neither the corpse nor any identification but was quoting relatives of the victim who attested to his identity.

The Assassination Part 2: Police say "He's dead" but his brother says he's alive.

Do you remember in August last year, the case of the Lebanese singer who was murdered here? The papers reported that her assailant was alive and in police custody, then a day later he was reported as dead followed a day or so later by reports that he was, once again, alive. Well, its happening again, the Chief of Dubai Police says the target of the assassination on Saturday, Sulim Yamadayev, is brown bread while Mr Yamadayev's brother says he's visited Mr Yamadayev in hospital and he's very much alive. Its so easy to get confused about these things.

This from the BBC.
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Mystery continues to surround the fate of a former Chechen commander who was reported shot in Dubai on Saturday.

The chief of Dubai's police said Sulim Yamadayev, a rival of Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov, died after an apparent assassination attempt.

But Russian media have contradicted these reports, quoting Mr Yamadayev's family saying he survived the attack.

His younger brother, Isa, said he had visited Sulim in hospital and that his condition had "not deteriorated".

"Reports that his body has been handed over to me are a lie," he told the Russia's Itar-Tass news agency by telephone.

In a separate interview to Russia's NTV Mir, Isa Yamadayev said his brother "feels OK", despite being wounded.

"He recognised us and even tried to talk to us. It was said that his life was out of danger. Everything will be OK," Isa said.

The Russian consul in Dubai, Sergey Kranogor, said the local authorities insisted that the victim of the shooting had died - though he was not yet able to confirm his identity.

"There was an attempt on the life of a Russian citizen at about 1500 on 28 March. The police maintain that the person is dead. The hospital where he was taken after the attack has also reported his death," Mr Kranogor told the Interfax news agency.

"We have not seen the [victim's] passport or the body and cannot say that it was Sulim Yamadayev who was killed."

At least one person, described as a Russian national, has been arrested in Dubai following the shooting.

'Kadyrov's foe'
The chief of Dubai police, Lt Gen Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, earlier dismissed any contradictions, saying: "The case is clear and there is no confusion over what happened. An organised criminal group was behind the assassination."

"He was shot and died instantly on the scene," he told Reuters, adding that one person - "a Russian national" - had been arrested.

Gen Tamim said Mr Yamadayev had been in Dubai on a Russian passport issued in the name of Sulaiman Madov.

Mr Yamadayev was named a Hero of Russia in 2005, the top national honour.

But he fell out with President Kadyrov last year and was sacked as commander of the elite Vostok security forces battalion. He later fled to the United Arab Emirates.

In September last year, his brother Ruslan was shot dead in his car while it waited at traffic lights in central Moscow.

Opponents have accused Mr Kadyrov's henchmen of systematically removing any opposition to his absolute rule, says the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Moscow.

In January, Umar Israilov, a former bodyguard for Mr Kadyrov who had accused him of torture and kidnapping, was killed in Vienna. Then last month, a former deputy mayor of Grozny was shot dead in Moscow.

Political assassination in Dubai

From the "Telegraph" 1 April '09.

THE Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, is facing fresh international scrutiny after a Chechen warlord who fell out with the Kremlin was assassinated in Dubai at the weekend. The murder of Sulim Yamadayev could provoke renewed violence in Chechnya and will cause alarm outside Russia after a series of similar assassinations in Istanbul and Vienna.

Mr Yamadayev, 36, pictured left, the leading rival of Ramzan Kadyrov, Chechnya's Kremlin-backed president, was shot dead on Saturday in the car park of a housing development in Dubai where he had been living under a false name since December. (The assassination happened at 3pm last Saturday afternoon in the carpark of Rimal 6 Building at Jumeirah Beach Residences. The "Gulf News" reports that two bodyguards were also injured in the attack. According to a security guard at the Rimal Building, and let's face it, those guys know everything that happens in their buildings, there had been previous attempts on Mr Yamadayev's life. A timely reminder to check out your neighbours before you move in. )

Experts alleged that the planning related to the attack suggested the involvement of Russia's FSB intelligence service, once headed by Mr Putin.

Coming only six months after Mr Yamadayev's brother, Ruslan, was shot dead outside the British embassy in Moscow, the murder is another sign that Chechnya's increasingly bloody gangland war is being fought beyond the Russian republic's borders.

According to police officials in Dubai, a lone gunman killed Mr Yamadayev as he walked from his apartment block to its underground car park. Police said it appeared that the "victim had been under surveillance for some time".

Until his removal in a palace putsch last year, Mr Yamadayev was Chechnya's second most powerful warlord, after Mr Kadyrov. Both men were former rebels who fought the Russian government in the first of Chechnya's two rebellions between 1994 and 1996.

They defected to the Kremlin's side in the second war, which began in 1999, and their powerful clans formed the bedrock of an uncertain pro-Russia government, with Mr Kadyrov at its helm.
As head of the eastern battalion and de facto leader of Chechnya's second biggest city of Gudermes, Mr Yamadayev was never happy in his junior role.

Even though Mr Kadyrov has largely succeeded - through a mixture of terror and Kremlin money - in pacifying Chechnya, the death of his rival could destabilise the republic.

The killing could also prompt world leaders to take Mr Putin to task over the various Chechnya-related assassinations.

"The latest events in Dubai will have indirect consequences for Putin's reputation as a world leader," said Alexander Konovalov, a Chechnya analyst.

In the past six months alone, three of Mr Kadyrov's opponents have been shot dead in Istanbul. A fourth was killed in Vienna after telling The New York Times that Mr Kadyrov had ordered executions and personally tortured his opponents.

The murder of Anna Politkovskaya, the outspoken Russian journalist, has also been linked to the Chechen President. Mr Kadyrov has denied all the allegations.

Questions are being asked in Moscow about whether the murders are solely on orders from within Chechnya, or whether they have the FSB's blessing.