DUBAI: Dubai police said Tuesday it is questioning two Palestinians suspected of involvement in the murder of a top Hamas militant, after having named an 11-member hit team traveling on European passports.
The two men, both residents of the United Arab Emirates, had “fled to Jordan after Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was found dead in a Dubai hotel room on Jan. 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.
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.
The Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has accused Israel of killing Mabhouh, 50, and vowed revenge.
Its members have said that Mabhouh, who was based in the Syrian capital, was on a visit to Dubai to buy weapons for the militant group’s armed wing of which he was a founder.
Khalfan said on Tuesday that it was most likely that information about Mabhouh was “leaked from people close to him, adding that the militant had booked his hotel room only a day before his arrival on Jan. 19 – the same day he was killed.
“This period of time is not enough to plot for the assassination, he said.
Palestinian Authority police spokesman, General Adnan Al-Dameeri, told AFP in Ramallah that Palestinian security authorities “confirmed information that two Hamas officers… were involved in the killing of Mabhouh.
On Monday Hamas official Ayman Taha told Al-Arabiya television that the two Palestinians arrested in Jordan who were handed over to Dubai worked for the Palestinian Authority and took part in Mabhouh’s assassination.
But Taha appeared to retract his statement on Tuesday telling the same news channel that Hamas “did not want to accuse anyone apart from Israel.
Dubai prosecution on Tuesday issued an “international arrest warrant against the 11 members of the alleged hit team, according to a statement.
Khalfan revealed on Monday that Mabhouh entered the UAE, of which Dubai is a member, using a passport that did not bear the same family name.
He was then tracked by his killers who had reserved a room across the hall from his in the hotel, according to Khalfan.
The killers tried to force open his door but it was unclear whether they managed to enter or waited until he opened it for them.
“He was strangled after receiving maybe an electric shock, said the police chief, denying media reports that the Hamas insurgent had come to Dubai on a mission to buy arms from Iran.
Mabhouh’s killers had left Dubai in the hours following the murder, said Khalfan, presenting the media surveillance camera footage of the team arriving and departing and their movements in the hotel.
The police chief added the group spent only 24 hours in Dubai, and that the killers used no weapons, credit cards or local phone lines during their stay.
Over the years, a number of Hamas leaders have died in what Israel calls “targeted killings.
In 2004, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed in an Israeli helicopter gunship attack in Gaza. One month later, another Hamas leader in the enclave, Abdel Aziz Al-Rantissi, was killed when two missiles hit his car.
In 1997, Israeli agents tried to poison Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman.
