Dubai Hamas assassination: how it was planned

Dressed in tennis gear and carrying racquets and balls, the guests who wandered through the lobby of Dubai’s al-Bustan Rotana hotel on Jan 19 couldn’t have looked less thrBut within hours they and nine accomplices had carried out the ruthlessly efficient assassination of the Hamas military Commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who had just a few seconds’ warning of his fate as the killers overpowered him in his room.

The murder bears the hallmarks of a meticulously-planned operation by the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, though Israel has so far refused to say whether it was involved.



Israeli ambassador 'must answer' questions What is beyond doubt, however, is that the alleged hit team, travelling on forged British, Irish, German and French passports, spent no more than 19 hours in the Gulf state, killing Mr Mabhouh just five hours after he had flown in from Syria.

After trawling through dozens of hours of CCTV footage, investigators have been able to piece together a minute-by-minute reconstruction of how the hit unfolded.

The 11-strong team arrived in Dubai in the early hours of Jan 19 on flights from France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, dressed as businessmen with trolley bags and laptops and blending in perfectly with other passengers.

As they checked into several different hotels, a young woman carrying a false Irish passport in the name of Gail Folliard, was filmed accepting the help of a porter to carry her bag.

A man using the name Kevin Daveron, and using another fake Irish passport checked into a different room in the same hotel ten minutes later, and at 2.29am a man using a French passport under the name Peter Elvinger arrived at the airport with a jumper slung casually over his shoulders.

“Elvinger”, who is now thought to be the leader of the squad, was met on his arrival by another member of the team, before the two left the airport in opposite directions.

After a few hours sleep the team began to assemble for instructions at a shopping centre, though at no point did any of them call each other – instead they used a series of telephone numbers in Austria, which was described by Dubai investigators as a “command centre” for the operation.

“Elvinger”, now dressed in a striped T-shirt, carrying a rucksack, and wearing a cap to disguise his features, arrived around 10.30am, followed by five other members of the team including the woman.

Two hours later the suspects left, one of them carrying shopping bags, and headed back to their hotels, where they began to check out at around 1.30pm.

“Daveron” went straight to another hotel, where he disappeared into the lavatories, emerging in a wig and glasses, and then on to a third hotel to meet up with the team again.

At 2pm, more than an hour before their target had even arrived in Dubai, the first of several surveillance teams arrived at the al-Bustan Rotana hotel dressed in their tennis gear.

Another team had been sent to an alternative hotel in case Mr Mabhouh checked in there but they left when they later received a call to say their intended victim had checked in at the al-Bustan.

Quite why Mr Mabhouh risked travelling to Dubai from Syria, his home of the past 20 years, remains a mystery, though there have been suggestions that he could have been lured there on the pretext of carrying out an arms deal for Hamas.

He arrived in Dubai using the name Mahmoud Abdul Ra’ouf Mohammed at 3.20pm and was immediately spotted at the airport by a member of another surveillance team who had been expectantly lying in wait.

As he arrived at the al-Bustan hotel, the “tennis players”, one of whom appeared to be wearing a false moustache and glasses, got into the lift with him and followed him to room 230.

They then passed on the details of the room number to “Elvinger”, possibly using a radio worn on the wrist, enabling “Elvinger” to check into room 237, across the corridor from Mr Mabhouh.

At 4pm a new surveillance team arrived at the hotel wearing track suits, T-shirts and caps and carrying shoulder bags, to help the tennis players keep an eye on their target.

Mr Mabhouh left the hotel at 4.23pm, followed closely by one of the surveillance team, just before “Elvinger” arrived to check into room 237 where he was joined by the woman and “Daveron”.

While the Hamas leader was out, the hit squad busily got to work trying to break into his room. Four burly men, with caps pulled down over their faces, arrived at 6.32pm, followed by another woman wearing a floppy hat, who has not been identified, and a man in a straw boater who took over surveillance from the tennis players.

The assassins tried to break into Mr Mabhouh’s room, and attempted to re-programme the door lock as the innocent-looking couple kept lookout in the hallway.

They were disturbed by a guest returning to her room and police believe they had to abandon their original plan – probably involving lying in wait for Mr Mabhouh inside his room – and decided instead to fool him into opening it when he returned.

When Mr Mabhouh arrived back at the hotel at 8.24pm, dressed in a checked shirt, jacket and jeans and carrying a white plastic bag, he had just minutes to live.

After he went back to his room, the female member of the hit team emerged from her room, grinning broadly, as the four burly members of the alleged assassination team went to work.

Footage of what happened next has not been released by police, but at some point during the 22 minutes which followed, Mr Mabhouh probably opened his door to his killers, who pinned him down and suffocated him.

They somehow managed to lock the door from the inside and put the latch and chain in place before they left.

Tellingly, when the four alleged assassins caught a lift back down to the lobby, one of them was wearing a bandage on his arm.

By 10.30pm the woman and “Daveron” were at Dubai airport to catch a flight to Paris, followed over the next 12 hours by the rest of the team, who flew to such scattered destinations as Frankfurt, Hong Kong and South Africa.

By the time Mr Mabhouh’s body was found at 1.30pm on Jan 20, when he failed to check out of his room, his killers were thousands of miles away.

The assassination was, as the Dubai authorities have been at pains to point out, “carried out by a professional team that is highly skilled in these kinds of operations
eatening.