Assassination suspects ‘hiding out in Israel’

DUBAI’S police chief said yesterday the suspects in a Hamas chief’s assassination in the Emirate are now hiding out in Israel to avoid arrest and urged the Jewish state to wage its wars at home.

Mahmud al-Mabhuh, a founder of the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20. Police on Sunday said he had been drugged, then suffocated.

“I say [the suspects] are in Israel. Israel says they are in Israel,” police chief Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan said. “If they stay in Israel, they won’t be arrested.”