DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, Feb. 16 (UPI) -- The assassination of Hamas' top gunrunner in a Dubai hotel is getting murkier against a backdrop of growing tension between Iran, which arms Hamas, and Israel and allegations an Israeli hit squad killed him.
Those suspicions were given weight by hotel security camera footage that shows the 11 "Europeans" the police say formed the assassination team constantly changing clothes and hairpieces to disguise themselves and fool the surveillance system.
Hamas claims the Jan. 19 assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was carried out by the Mossad, Israel's foreign intelligence service which over the years has killed dozens of the Jewish state's enemies.
The Israeli government had made no comment on the allegations or indeed on Mabhouh's mysterious death.
But by all accounts, the assassination of one of the most wanted men in Hamas was carried out with textbook precision and chilling efficiency by a highly trained team of professionals.
Israeli journalist Yossi Melman, who has written extensively on intelligence matters and clearly has access to the Mossad, said, "What makes the security camera shots … interesting is the professionalism of the suspected assassins.
"They arrived on separate flights from different places … They stayed in different hotels and were careful to make phone calls using international routers …
"They try throughout to appear to be innocent tourists or business people, there to enjoy themselves and even play some tennis," he wrote with apparent admiration in the Israeli daily Haaretz.
Various accounts claim the Mossad is conducting a covert war against Iran, whose nuclear ambitions are seen as a mortal threat to the Jewish state, and its allies such as Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
This has allegedly involved assassinations. One of the most notable was Imad Mughniyeh, the military chief of Hezbollah, a close ally of Tehran and which is expected to launch retaliatory attacks on Israel if Iran's nuclear facilities are attacked.
The long-elusive Mughniyeh was killed in Damascus on Feb. 12, 2008, although Israel has never confirmed it was responsible.
Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai's police chief, suggested that a foreign intelligence service was responsible for the Mabhouh killing.
"We don't rule out Mossad," he said. "When we arrest these suspects we'll know who masterminded it."
Tamim said the team of 10 men and one woman spent about 19 hours in the Gulf emirate and in view of the speed with which they gathered in Dubai from various locations clearly knew Mabhouh's movements well in advance.
Police say six of the suspected killer squad carried British passports. Three used Irish passports, one had a German passport and one, "Peter Elvinger," the alleged leader, traveled on French papers.
The Daily Mail of London reported people with the same names and birthplaces as those on the British passports were all born in Britain. But that does not mean these were the suspects' true identities. British and Irish authorities said passports belonging to the alleged killers were forgeries.
The Mossad has used such the subterfuge of identity theft before, most notably in a bungled September 1997 attempt by a five-man team to assassinate Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in Amman, Jordan. One of two agents who were captured carried a Canadian passport in the name of a Canadian living in Israel.
According to the police reconstruction of the events of Jan. 19 in Dubai, most of the team arrived of different flights in Dubai shortly before Mabhouh, who flew in on Emirates Flight EK912 from Damascus, where he was based, around 2:30 p.m. Jan. 19, apparently on a mission to secure arms from Iran.
Around six hours later he was dead in his first-floor room in the five-star Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel, near the international airport.
He had gone out around 4:30 p.m. and returned about four hours later. A security camera shows him getting out of an elevator to enter his room at 8:24 p.m. At 8:46 p.m., CCTV shows the alleged two-man execution team leaving Mabhouh's room and depart the hotel a few minutes later.
The pair was able to lock the door of Room 203 from the inside as they left. They placed a "do not disturb" sign on the door handle.
They and the other members of the hit team calmly left their hotels and within two hours all had left the United Arab Emirates on flights for several destinations.
By the time Mabhouh's body was found around noon Jan. 20 all the suspects were long gone, scattered around Europe and Asia and presumably shedding their phony identities.
