http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/dubai/7251960/Dubai-Hamas-assassination-how-it-was-planned.html

Dubai Hamas assassination: how it was planned
Dressed in tennis gear and carrying racquets and balls, the guests who
wandered through the lobby of Dubai’s al-Bustan Rotana hotel on Jan 19
couldn’t have looked less threatening.


By Duncan Gardham, Security Correspondent
Published: 8:30AM GMT 17 Feb 2010

But within hours they and nine accomplices had carried out the
ruthlessly efficient assassination of the Hamas military Commander
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who had just a few seconds’ warning of his fate as
the killers overpowered him in his room.

Police in Dubai believe the murder bears the hallmarks of a
meticulously-planned operation by the Israeli intelligence service
Mossad, though Israel has so far refused to say whether it was
involved.

What is beyond doubt, however, is that the alleged hit team,
travelling on forged British, Irish, German and French passports,
spent no more than 19 hours in the Gulf state, killing Mr Mabhouh just
five hours after he had flown in from Syria.

After trawling through dozens of hours of CCTV footage, investigators
have been able to piece together a minute-by-minute reconstruction of
how the hit unfolded.

The 11-strong team arrived in Dubai in the early hours of Jan 19 on
flights from France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, dressed as
businessmen with trolley bags and laptops and blending in perfectly
with other passengers.

As they checked into several different hotels, the only female member
of the team, a young blonde woman carrying a false Irish passport in
the name of Gail Folliard, was filmed accepting the help of a porter
to carry her bag.

A man using the name Kevin Daveron, and using another fake Irish
passport checked into a different room in the same hotel ten minutes
later, and at 2.29am a man using a French passport under the name
Peter Elvinger arrived at the airport with a jumper slung casually
over his shoulders.

“Elvinger”, who is now thought to be the leader of the squad, was met
on his arrival by another member of the team, before the two left the
airport in opposite directions.

After a few hours sleep the team began to assemble for instructions at
a shopping centre, though at no point did any of them call each other
– instead they used a series of telephone numbers in Austria, which
was described by Dubai investigators as a “command centre” for the
operation.

“Elvinger”, now dressed in a striped T-shirt, carrying a rucksack, and
wearing a cap to disguise his features, arrived around 10.30am,
followed by five other members of the team including the woman.

Two hours later the suspects left, one of them carrying shopping bags,
and headed back to their hotels, where they began to check out at
around 1.30pm.

“Daveron” went straight to another hotel, where he disappeared into
the lavatories, emerging in a wig and glasses, and then on to a third
hotel to meet up with the team again.

At 2pm, more than an hour before their target had even arrived in
Dubai, the first of several surveillance teams arrived at the
al-Bustan Rotana hotel dressed in their tennis gear.

Another team had been sent to an alternative hotel in case Mr Mabhouh
checked in there but they left when they later received a call to say
their intended victim had checked in at the al-Bustan.

Quite why Mr Mabhouh risked travelling to Dubai from Syria, his home
of the past 20 years, remains a mystery, though there have been
suggestions that he could have been lured there on the pretext of
carrying out an arms deal for Hamas.

He arrived in Dubai using the name Mahmoud Abdul Ra’ouf Mohammed at
3.20pm and was immediately spotted at the airport by a member of
another surveillance team who had been expectantly lying in wait.

As he arrived at the al-Bustan hotel, the “tennis players”, one of
whom appeared to be wearing a false moustache and glasses, got into
the lift with him and followed him to room 230.

They then passed on the details of the room number to “Elvinger”,
possibly using a radio worn on the wrist, enabling “Elvinger” to check
into room 237, across the corridor from Mr Mabhouh.

At 4pm a new surveillance team arrived at the hotel wearing track
suits, T-shirts and caps and carrying shoulder bags, to help the
tennis players keep an eye on their target.

Mr Mabhouh left the hotel at 4.23pm, followed closely by one of the
surveillance team, just before “Elvinger” arrived to check into room
237 where he was joined by the woman and “Daveron”.

While the Hamas leader was out, the hit squad busily got to work
trying to break into his room. Four burly men, with caps pulled down
over their faces, arrived at 6.32pm, followed by the woman, now
wearing a floppy hat, and “Daveron” in a straw boater who took over
surveillance from the tennis players.

The assassins were filmed trying to break into Mr Mabhouh’s room, and
attempted to re-programme the door lock as the innocent-looking couple
kept lookout in the hallway.

They were disturbed by a guest returning to her room and police
believe they had to abandon their original plan – probably involving
lying in wait for Mr Mabhouh inside his room – and decided instead to
fool him into opening it when he returned.

When Mr Mabhouh arrived back at the hotel at 8.24pm, dressed in a
checked shirt, jacket and jeans and carrying a white plastic bag, he
had just minutes to live.

After he went back to his room, the female member of the hit team
emerged from her room, grinning broadly, as the four burly members of
the alleged assassination team went to work.

Footage of what happened next has not been released by police, but at
some point during the 22 minutes which followed, Mr Mabhouh opened his
door to his killers, who pinned him down and suffocated him.

They somehow managed to lock the door from the inside and put the
latch and chain in place before they left.

Tellingly, when the four alleged assassins caught a lift back down to
the lobby, one of them was wearing a bandage on his arm.

By 10.30pm the woman and “Daveron” were at Dubai airport to catch a
flight to Paris, followed over the next 12 hours by the rest of the
team, who flew to such scattered destinations as Frankfurt, Hong Kong
and South Africa.

By the time Mr Mabhouh’s body was found at 1.30pm on Jan 20, when he
failed to check out of his room, his killers were thousands of miles
away.

The assassination was, as the Dubai authorities have been at pains to
point out, “carried out by a professional team that is highly skilled
in these kinds of operations”.

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