CANADIAN POLICE have arrested a suspect in the killing of the senior Hamas official found dead in his Dubai hotel room in January, Dubai’s police chief said yesterday.
Dahi Khalfan Tamim claimed in several media interviews that the arrest is being kept quiet by Canada. Last week, Mr Tamim told a Gulf newspaper that an unnamed western country had two months ago apprehended a key suspect in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
Shortly after al-Mabhouh’s death, Mr Tamim said he was “99 per cent” sure Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad was behind the killing. Under its policy of “ambiguity” on security and intelligence matters, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement.
Mr Tamim said yesterday that he was frustrated because no further information was forthcoming from the Canadian authorities regarding the arrest.
“We want clarity on this issue. We want the Canadian authorities to tell us exactly what the details are – the thing that is discomfiting is the lack of transparency on this,” he added. Canadian officials have not yet commented publicly.
Mr Tamim told Al-Ittihad, an Arabic-language daily, that the suspect arrested by the Canadian authorities was “among the preparatory group which arrived in [Dubai] and left it before the crime”. The newspaper reported that the person was among a number of suspects for which international red notices had been issued by Interpol on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.
Mr Tamim claimed in an interview with the Al Arabiya TV channel that Canada had told Dubai officials not to make the arrest public.
Dubai police initially issued warrants for 11 suspects but later said the assassination was carried out by a hit squad comprising some 30 people. Most of the suspects had travelled to Dubai on fraudulent Irish, British, Australian, German and French passports. Eight forged Irish passports were used.
Ireland, Britain and Australia later expelled Israeli diplomats in protest after concluding Israel had forged passports.
During the summer, an alleged Israeli agent named Uri Brodsky was arrested in Poland on a European arrest warrant issued by a German court. Brodsky, suspected of fraudulently obtaining a German passport believed to have been used by one of the killers, was subsequently granted bail.