http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/hamas-blames-israel-for-alleged-electrocution-death-of-armed-wing-founder/story-e6frg6so-1225824974325
Hamas blames Israel for alleged electrocution death of armed wing founder James Hider From: The Times January 30, 2010 1:16PM THE Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas accused Israel yesterday of assassinating one of its military chiefs in Dubai - a man who helped to found the group's armed wing and who was behind the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers in the first intifada 21 years ago. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who was a key to the continuing operations to smuggle weapons into the blockaded Gaza Strip, was killed in a hotel in Dubai on January 20, Hamas officials said. He is believed to have been behind the attempted smuggling of truckloads of weapons into Gaza through Sudan last year - a convoy that was blown up by Israeli jets while still in Africa. Hamas officials refused to specify the circumstances of his death until an inquiry had been held, and hinted that the delay in announcing the killing was part of an attempt to capture his assassins. Dubai police said they had begun a manhunt but suspected that the killers had already left the emirate using fake European passports. They said: "The culprits left a trace behind that points to them and will help in chasing and arresting them." The police promised to work with Interpol to track the killers down. Mr al-Mabhouh's brother, Faiq, said that the death was caused by electrocution. "The first results of a joint investigation by Hamas and the United Arab Emirates show he was killed by an electrical appliance that was held to his head," he said. Security sources quoted in Gulf media said that as well as electrical burns, al-Mabhouh's body bore traces of strangulation. Israel has so far declined to comment on the charges but in the past has carried out numerous overseas assassinations of Palestinian military leaders, as well as killing a number of officials inside the Palestinian territories in airstrikes, including Hamas's wheelchair-bound spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, in 2004. His successor, Abdelaziz al-Rantissi, was killed in an almost identical helicopter attack a month later. Izzat Rashaq, a senior Hamas official in Damascus, said that Mr al-Mabhouh, a 50-year-old father of four from the Jabalya refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, had masterminded the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, during the first Palestinian uprising against Israel in the late 1980s. He is believed to have pioneered the tactic of abducting soldiers to exert pressure on Israel. Hamas has been holding one soldier, Gilad Schalit, inside Gaza for three-and-a-half years. The two soldiers were kidnapped on two occasions in 1989. The body of one was discovered seven years later. Mr al-Mabhouh had been in Israeli prisons on different occasions before being exiled and taking up residence, together with many other Hamas leaders, in Damascus. He was killed a day after he arrived in Dubai. Hamas did not say what he was doing in the Gulf city, which many militant groups use as a financial hub. Hamas, which Israel has blockaded in Gaza for three years and which it tried to topple in a brief war last year, said that it would "retaliate for this Zionist crime at the appropriate time and place". It added that Mr al-Mabhouh was buried yesterday in a Palestinian refugee camp near Damascus. His alleged assassination may have been the latest operation by the Israeli spy agency Mossad and its special forces to hunt down the Jewish state's enemies and kill them. In 1972, after Palestinians from the Black September organisation killed nine Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, Israeli agents tracked down and assassinated the masterminds of the attack across Europe and the Middle East. One of the highest-profile assassination attempts was of Khaled Meshaal in Jordan in 1997, when Israeli agents squirted poison in his ear. Jordanian police caught the two agents and held them until Israel agreed to hand over the antidote to the toxin, and the Hamas leader survived. Israeli special forces also killed the Fatah co-founder, Khalil al-Wazir, widely known as Abu Jihad, in his home with his family in Tunis in 1988. He was shot while watching TV news of the Palestinian uprising. One of the assassinations attributed to Israel, but which it has never acknowledged publicly, was of Imad Mughniyeh, the head of Hezbollah's armed wing and the world's most-wanted terrorist before Osama bin Laden carried out the September 11, 2001, attacks. He had been behind deadly attacks against Jewish organisations in Argentina and had transformed the Lebanese militia into the most successful guerrilla group in the Arab world. He died in an explosion in his car in Damascus in 2008.Hamas blames Israel for alleged electrocution death of armed wing founder
