Dubai police: IDs of Mabhouh’s killers not fake

Dubai police says the European passports used by members of a terrorist squad who killed Hamas leader Mahmud al-Mabhouh in a hotel were not fake.

“Dubai police has more evidence, apart from the tapes and photos that were revealed earlier,” Al-Bayan newspaper quoted Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan as saying.

“The coming days will carry more surprises which will leave no room for doubt,” he added.

He said that Dubai immigration officers have undergone training courses by European security experts and are qualified to spot fake documents.

“They applied these procedures at Dubai airport when the alleged (terrorists) entered the country…No forgery was found in those passports,” Khalfan insisted.

He described Mabhuh’s terror suspects, widely believed to be agents of the Israeli intelligence service, as “stupid” because their moves were “traced second-by-second” by security cameras.

Upon Dubai police’s disclosure of the names and photos of the alleged hit team and issuance of international arrest warrants for the suspects on Monday, Britain and Ireland denied involvement of their citizens in the terror operation and vowed to investigate what they called an ID theft.

The suspected hit team was made up of six British passport holders, three Irish, including a woman, a German and a man with a French passport.

Britain summoned the Israeli ambassador, Ron Prosor, to London on Thursday to discuss the use of the identities, apparently stolen from six British citizens visiting Israel.

The murder suspects arrived in Dubai on January 19 — a day after Mabhuh arrived in the Emirate — and left the United Arab Emirates on January 20, the day the senior Hamas member was found dead in his hotel room.

This is while the identities of six others suspected to have been involved in the murder plot are reportedly being sought by Dubai police.