Thread: Dubai: Assasination of Hamas leader al-Mabhouh

Originally Posted by larvidchr

Quote: Originally Posted by sabang

Originally Posted by Milkman A hit team of 11 is too many people

Sure, but most of them were for surveillance, seeing who he made contact with and so on.

Yes they do use big teams, in the spectacular mistaken ID assassination in Lillehammer Norway they used a 9 man team. Anyways in this present case a killer got killed, Mossad are truly an Israeli Government organization that must spread fear into enemies of the state of Israel, they reach all over the world and their memory is long, you do not want to be on one of their black list's.

OK thanks. I was not aware of this. I also believe it was likely Mossad and did not mean my comment as denying that.

Ahhhh, is'nt nice to be the chosen one, to be free to do what ever you want in this world. Supported by the US taxpayers.

Tourists with a License to Kill

A Look at the Mossad's Assassination Squads


http://www.spiegel.de/international/...678805,00.html




A composite of Dubai police handout photos released on Feb. 15, 2010 showing 11 people suspected of being involved in the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

Many intelligence agencies are suspected of carrying out assassinations, but few are as notorious for doing so as Israel's Mossad. Although the agency has become legendary for its amazing successes, it has still had its share of failures. If the Mossad was behind the recent killing in Dubai, it might be another blemish on the agency's reputation.
In 1955, seven years after the Israeli state was founded, the philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz wrote a letter to then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. In it, he complained that innocent Palestinians were being killed in Israeli operations. "I do not agree with you," responded Ben-Gurion. "While it is good that there be a world full of peace, fraternity, justice, and honesty, it is even more important that we be in it."


This notion of a well-fortified state that eliminates its enemies by force whenever possible is still supported by a large majority of Israelis. Such actions include assassinations carried out by Israel's military and the Mossad, its foreign intelligence service. Indeed, human rights organizations estimate that the Israeli military has killed more than 100 people in the Palestinian territories in so-called "targeted killings." The most recent incident that the Mossad is embroiled in shows that the majority of Israelis continue to believe that such killings are justified. In January, the Mossad is said to have killed a weapons buyer from Hamas in Dubai. Earlier this week, authorities in Dubai made public a compilation of surveillance photos showing the members of the alleged hit squad. German intelligence sources say that only an intelligence agency is capable of carrying out such a professional operation. In Britain, government officials were more explicit: They said they were convinced that the Mossad was behind the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
But, in Israel, the debate revolves primarily around two questions. First, did the operation have the Mossad's usual degree of "professionalism"? And, second, should the operation be considered a failure because photos of 11 suspected agents have been made public and the world now believes that the Mossad is not above creating fake passports from friendly countries, such as Germany or Great Britain, or "borrowing" the identities of their citizens.
A Chronicle of Successful Hits
The awe the Mossad inspires among intelligence agencies is mostly due to its history of ambitious operations. It has freed hostages from hopeless situations; it has found a way to bring a Russian MiG-21 fighter jet to Israel at the request of its political leaders; and, during the Cold War, it was known to supply the CIA with classified papers stolen from the Soviets.
But the intelligence service's hit squads have their own mystique. If the Mossad really is behind the recent murder in Dubai, it will be just one in a series of bloody attacks -- though Mossad operations have also seen their share of blunders.
It has not always been clear that the Mossad was behind every deadly attack -- or whether it was some other Israeli unit. The legendary operation to hunt down and kill the "Black September" terrorists who attacked Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, for example, was carried out by a unit formed specifically for that purpose. They eventually eliminated almost all of them -- though they did also kill an innocent Moroccan waiter in Norway after mistaking him for one of the terrorists. And at least once, in Beirut in 1973, the agents disguised themselves as tourists -- just like the "Dubai 11."
It is thought that, during the mid-1970s, then Prime Minister Golda Meir appointed a so-called "X Committee" that was -- and perhaps still is -- responsible for keeping a list of people to be assassinated. At the Mossad, a unit known as "Caesaria" is allegedly tasked with carrying out targeted killings.
It is only in the rarest of cases that Israel will hint at its involvement in an assassination operation. As a rule, the Mossad never acknowledges it participation. Because of this secrecy, it is likely that more deaths have been attributed to the intelligence service than it is actually responsible for. Still, the list of incidents that can fairly safely be attributed to it is long -- and goes back over 40 years.
In the 1960s, for example, the Mossad is thought to have sent letter bombs to German scientists who were helping Egypt to build an advanced missile program. Many of them died.
Seventy Bullets
One of the most spectacular killings attributed to the Mossad took place in 1987 in Tunis, where PLO leader Khalil Al Wazir -- also known as Abu Jihad -- was living. The operation allegedly involved some 30 agents, who reached the Tunisian coastline in small boats. Some of them pretended to be tourists while making their way toward the house of Yasser Arafat's most important henchman. Others took up positions wearing Tunisian army uniforms. Flying overhead during the operation was an Israeli Boeing 707, which was meant to jam all communications on the ground. The assassination squad forced its way into the house and killed a few servants before turning their guns -- and 70 bullets -- on Al Wazir in the presence of his wife and children.
In October 1995, Fathi Shikaki, a member of the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad, was killed in Malta. The assassin road up on a motorcycle and shot his victim three times in the head. It later emerged that the operation had been meticulously planned long in advance. Indeed, the motorcycle had been stolen two months previously. A dozen agents are believed to have been involved. All of them disappeared without a trace after the hit.
In 1996, Yehiyeh Ayyash, the notorious Hamas bombmaker known as "The Engineer," was killed in the Gaza Strip when his booby-trapped cell phone exploded. This novel method of attack shocked Palestinian militants. It is generally believed that the Mossad was behind the attack.
In September 2004, another member of Hamas -- thought to be Izz Eldine Subhi Sheik Khalil -- met his end in Damascus when an explosive detonated beneath his car. He had been responsible for coordinating the operations of the military arm of Hamas. Though Israel did not officially take responsibility for the attack, it was understood as being a signal to Syria's leaders that even their capital city was not beyond the reach of Israeli agents.
A Few High-Profile Failures
Damascus was also the scene of another death, in February 2008, when a bomb tore apart the Mitsubishi Pajero belonging to Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh, to whom hundreds of deaths have been attributed. Although Israel officially denied having anything to do with the death, most experts believe that the Mossad was at least partly involved -- possibly in collaboration with other intelligence services in the region.
To date, the Mossad's most spectacular failure has been a mission carried out in Amman, Jordan, in September 1997. Two Mossad agents disguised as Canadian tourists tried to kill Hamas leader Khaled Mashal with a lethal nerve toxin which soaks through the skin. The attack failed and Mashal's bodyguards were able to chase down the agents and hand them over to the Jordanian police. Jordanian officials quickly besieged the Israeli Embassy, where four other Mossad agents, giving up their cover, sought sanctuary.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was then forced to admit to the deed to get his agents back safely. He flew to Amman and apologized before the brother of King Hussein -- the king did not want to meet with him in person. After difficult negotiations, Israel handed over the antidote to the nerve agent that had been administered to Mashal as well as the chemical make-up of the opiate, which had allegedly been used in previous operations. In addition, Israel was also forced to release from custody Hamas founder Shiek Ahmed Yassin and dozens of other Palestinians and Jordanians.
In the end, an official investigation concluded that the Mossad had been "fixated on high risk operations." The botched attack was a blemish on the Mossad's reputation. For several years thereafter, it refrained from carrying out targeted killings -- or at least was much more careful about doing so.
Real Target: Iran
If the assassination in Dubai really was carried out by the Mossad, it could prove to be yet another blow to its reputation. Indeed, it has never had one of its hits filmed by others or had the pictures of its hit squad's members publicly displayed.
In fact, the Mossad has been losing a lot of polish on its sterling reputation for a number of years now. Other Israeli intelligence agencies have gained in esteem within Israel. In recent years, Jordan's intelligence service has become just as important to the US as Mossad was in the region.
But this holds true primarily in the field of counter-terrorism. The Mossad's current focus, however, is Iran's nuclear program. In that regard, Israelis say, Mossad has excelled -- away from the public eye.

Mossad at its best ! Did they also invent the story of WMD in Iraq ?

Actually you could make a great "Hollywood" movie out of this (7 parts). But you would be called a ant-semitic if you do.

Part 1

The Story of 'Operation Orchard'
How Israel Destroyed Syria's Al Kibar Nuclear Reactor
By Erich Follath and Holger Stark
In September 2007, Israeli fighter jets destroyed a mysterious complex in the Syrian desert. The incident could have led to war, but it was hushed up by all sides. Was it a nuclear plant and who gave the orders for the strike?
The mighty Euphrates river is the subject of the prophecies in the Bible's Book of Revelation, where it is written that the river will be the scene of the battle of Armageddon: "The sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the East."
Today, time seems to stand still along the river. The turquoise waters of the Euphrates flow slowly through the northern Syrian provincial city Deir el-Zor, whose name translates as "monastery in the forest." Farmers till the fields, and vendors sell camel's hair blankets, cardamom and coriander in the city's bazaars. Occasionally archaeologists visit the region to excavate the remains of ancient cities in the surrounding area, a place where many peoples have left their mark -- the Parthians and the Sassanids, the Romans and the Jews, the Ottomans and the French, who were assigned the mandate for Syria by the League of Nations and who only withdrew their troops in 1946. Deir el-Zor is the last outpost before the vast, empty desert, a lifeless place of jagged mountains and inaccessible valleys that begins not far from the town center.
But on a night two years ago, something dramatic happened in this sleepy place. It's an event that local residents discuss in whispers in teahouses along the river, when the water pipes glow and they are confident that no officials are listening -- the subject is taboo in the state-controlled media, and they know that drawing too much attention to themselves in this authoritarian state could be hazardous to their health.
Some in Deir el-Zor talk of a bright flash which lit up the night in the distant desert. Others report seeing a gigantic column of smoke over the Euphrates, like a threatening finger. Some talk of omens, while others relate conspiracy theories. The pious older guests at Jisr al-Kabir, a popular restaurant near the city's landmark suspension bridge, believe it was a sign from heaven.
All the rumors have long since muddied the waters as to what people may or may not have seen. But even the supposedly advanced Western world, with its state-of-the-art surveillance technology and interconnectedness through the mass media, has little more solid information than the people in this Syrian desert town. What happened in the night of Sept. 6, 2007 in the desert, 130 kilometers (81 miles) from the Iraqi border, 30 kilometers from Deir el-Zor, is one of the great mysteries of our times.
'This Incident Never Occurred'
At 2:55 p.m. on that day, the Damascus-based Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that Israeli fighter jets coming from the Mediterranean had violated Syrian airspace at "about one o'clock" in the morning. "Air defense units confronted them and forced them to leave after they dropped some ammunition in deserted areas without causing any human or material damage," a Syrian military spokesman said, according to the news agency. There was no explanation whatsoever for why such a dramatic event was concealed for half a day.
At 6:46 p.m., Israeli government radio quoted a military spokesman as saying: "This incident never occurred." At 8:46 p.m., a spokesperson for the US State Department said during a daily press briefing that he had only heard "second-hand reports" which "contradict" each other.
To this day, Syria and Israel, two countries that have technically been at war since the founding of the Jewish state in 1948, have largely adhered to a bizarre policy of downplaying what was clearly an act of war. Gradually it became clear that the fighter pilots did not drop some random ammunition over empty no-man's land on that night in 2007, but had in fact deliberately targeted and destroyed a secret Syrian complex.
Was it a nuclear plant, in which scientists were on the verge of completing the bomb? Were North Korean, perhaps even Iranian experts, also working in this secret Syrian facility? When and how did the Israelis learn about the project, and why did they take such a great risk to conduct their clandestine operation? Was the destruction of the Al Kibar complex meant as a final warning to the Iranians, a trial run of sorts intended to show them what the Israelis plan to do if Tehran continues with its suspected nuclear weapons program?
In recent months, SPIEGEL has spoken with key politicians and experts about the mysterious incident in the Syrian desert, including Syrian President Bashar Assad, leading Israeli intelligence expert Ronen Bergman, International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohammed ElBaradei and influential American nuclear expert David Albright. SPIEGEL has also talked with individuals involved in the operation, who have only now agreed to reveal, under conditions of anonymity, what they know.
These efforts have led to an account that, while not solving the mystery in its entirety, at least delivers many pieces of the puzzle. It also offers an assessment of an operation that changed the Middle East and generated shock waves that are still being felt today.


The Story of 'Operation Orchard': How Israel Destroyed Syria's Al Kibar Nuclear Reactor - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International