Dubai police said Tuesday it is questioning two Palestinians suspected of involvement in the murder of a top Hamas official, after having named an 11-member hit team travelling on European passports.
 
The two men, both residents of the United Arab Emirates, had "fled to Jordan" after Mahmud al-Mabhouh was found dead in a Dubai hotel room on January 20, police chief Dahi Khalfan told AFP.
 
He said they were extradited from Jordan "three days ago," pointing to a "strong suspicion" against one of the two who had met a member of the suspected hit team before the assassination.
 
According to Dubai police, the two were linked to the operation and provided logistical information. Even if they are connected to the killing, we can assume that they know very little that would help identify the perpetrators. Such operations involve stringent compartmentalization, not only among the members of the teams, but also with those assisting them and who may have provided information that allowed them to actually carry out the assassination.
 
Khalfan announced on Monday that police were hunting six British passport holders, three with Irish passports, including a woman, and the holders of a German and a French passport, all of whom had managed to leave the UAE.
 
Meanwhile, a British government source said Tuesday that the three Irish passport-holders accused of taking part in the assassination of Mabhouh last month were most likely Mossad agents carrying false documentation, according to The Daily Telegraph.
 
France, Ireland, Britain and Germany whose passports were used by the 11 people Dubai police say assassinated Mabhouh, have so far refrained from claiming responsibility for the civilians in question, and are once again pointing an accusatory finger at the Mossad.
 
The Daily Telegraph said the UK had not "confirmed" involvement in the assassination plot, which was revealed at a press conference Monday by Dubai's police force.
 
The source added he does not believe Irish citizens participated in the murder, but rather that it was the work of Mossad agents carrying false documents.
 
According to Dubai police, a team of 11 "mercenaries" was behind the assassination of the 50-year old senior Hamas man Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last month. They escaped from the emirate and are currently the objects of a global manhunt.
 
The police added Monday that members of the cell entered Dubai with foreign passports – three of them Irish, six British, one French, and one German. Police also say the cell members dressed as tennis players in order to move between hotels with ease, and that one of them was a woman.
 
The Dubai authorities say there were two teams: one carried out surveillance of the target, while the other - which appears to be a group of younger men, at least as far as the camera shots show - carried out the killing.
 
Contrary to reports, the squad did not break into Mabhouh's hotel room, nor did they knock on the door. They entered the room using copies of keys they had somehow acquired. Police also presented photographs of the suspected assassins.
 
Khalfan says it is not unlikely that the assassination teams were made up of Mossad agents. "We do not rule out Mossad, but when we arrest those suspects we will know who masterminded it. [We have not] issued arrest warrants yet, but will do so soon," he told a press conference on Monday.
 
He told reporters that six members of the alleged assassination team held British passports, three held Irish passports, and one each from France and Germany. A leading suspect, who carried a French passport, left Dubai for Munich via Qatar after the killing, Khalfan added.
 
Police released the suspects' photos, names, nationalities and details from their passports, which authorities said were not fake. "Israel carries out a lot of assassinations in many countries, even in countries it is allied to," Khalfan said, adding that Mabhouh may have been killed by electrocution.
 
The bits of information and the camera images suggest methods used by the Mossad that Mishka Ben-David wrote about in detail in his novel "Duet in Beirut." Ben-David, who served as the intelligence officer for the Caesarea operations branch of the Mossad, insists that his novel is a work of fiction. However, it is obvious to all that the experience he accumulated in the Mossad over the years appears in his book.
 
"Duet in Beirut" is very similar to the failed attempt in 1997 to assassinate Hamas politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal in Jordan. Ben-David describes the Mossad agents, changing hotels, changing vehicles, arriving from different destinations, and changing clothes and appearances in order to make identification difficult.
 
Two of the suspects are seen changing clothes on the security camera footage in Dubai. The actual capture of the suspects on film may reveal their identities - and even suggest only partial success of the operation.
 
The Dubai police noted that one of the assassination's masterminds left the country before al-Mabhouh was killed. Police officials already approached Interpol and asked that the assassination suspects be handed over to Dubai.
 
Al-Mabhouh was found dead in his Dubai hotel room on January 20, but Hamas only reported that he was killed several days later. The Islamic movement charged that Israel was behind the killing the senior group member and vowed to take revenge.
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