Hamas killing: Cold precision and spy caper

DUBAI police have appealed for an international manhunt after releasing names and photos of an alleged 11-member hit squad accused of stalking and killing a Hamas commander last month in a plot that mixed cold precision with spy caper disguises such as fake beards and wigs.

Officials have said they will seek assistance from the global police coordination agency Interpol to hunt down the suspects in the killing of Mahmud al-Mabhouh, whose body was found on January 20.

Dubai’s police chief, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, yesterday attempted to create a full storyline of the killing.

It included surveillance video clips from the suspects’ airport arrivals to their hasty departures to Europe and Asia. Al-Mabhouh’s body was found in room 230 at the Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel near Dubai’s international airport.

Tamim said the suspects arrived in Dubai at different times, checked into different hotels and tailed al-Mabhouh from the moment of his arrival in Dubai to when he entered his hotel room. Some of the suspects even rode in the same elevator as al-Mabhouh to verify his room number.

Surveillance footage shows the female suspect apparently wearing a wig and at times a big hat and sunglasses to blend in as a tourist. Others also were seen disguised as vacationers, wearing baseball caps or tennis outfits and carrying rackets.

Tamim also said some suspects donned fake beards.

He said forensic tests indicated al-Mabhouh died of suffocation, but lab analyses were still under way to pinpoint other possible factors in his death.

Hamas initially claimed al-Mabhouh was poisoned and electrocuted, but later a Hamas leader Mohammed Nazzal denied that poison was used.

The killing itself took just 10 minutes, Tamim said.

Four assassins later entered his room while he was out, using an electronic device to open the door, and waited for al-Mabhouh to return.

Tamim said they were careful not to disturb anything in the room and left the door locked from the inside to try to hide the fact that they had broken in.

The team then headed for the airport, some of them flying to Europe and others to Asia, he said.

All left the country within 19 hours of their arrivals in Dubai, one of seven semi-autonomous emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates.

Dubai police claimed that four members of the alleged cell — three men identified as British and one Irish — carried out the killing.

Five others, including the woman, were used as spotters and in other planning roles, police said.

The mastermind was a man identified as French.