Fatah and Hamas are trading accusations following the arrest of two Palestinians extradited from Jordan to Dubai on suspicion of involvement in the assassination of Hamas senior Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in January, Army Radio reported.
Dubai issued arrest warrants for eleven people allegedly tied to Mabhouh’s killing, but only two were captured so far. The fact that one of the Palestinian detainees is a security official in the Palestinian Authority sparked the latest spate of Hamas-Fatah bickering.
Faik al-Mabhouh, the brother of the slain official, on Tuesday still maintained that Israel was behind the assassination. “I believe Israel is behind my brother’s assassination,” he said a day after Dubai published security camera footage showing the ten men and one woman allegedly involved.
All suspects named by Dubai are European nationals, but Faik al-Mabhouh insisted “from the start we said Israel has a hand in it, [but] it didn’t work alone.”
Gen. Dahi Tamim, Dubai’s police chief, displayed a series of passport photographs showing 10 men and a woman at a press conference on Monday.
Most of the individuals named by Dubai appeared to be of Middle Eastern origin, Gen Dahi Tamim, Dubai’s police chief said at a press conference where he presented photos of the suspects.
Six of the suspects carried British passports, three others had Irish passports, while the other two had French and German documents.
“This is a complex operation, there is no way only eleven people were involved. Maybe they carried out the killing, but there were people who followed Mahmoud from the moment he left the [Gaza] Strip and until he reached Dubai, and collected intelligence about him – it must be more than eleven people,” Faik told the radio station.
He said Mossad, Israel’s spy agency to which he attributed the killing, has “no problems recruiting people also abroad and maybe some Palestinians gave them a green light. I believe Israel is behind all the mysterious assassinations we have been seeing recently in the Middle East.”
While Hamas accused Fatah of colluding with Israel to carry out the killing, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas hinted that the organization ruling Gaza was also not hermetically protected from infiltrations.
“There are security breaches the Hamas leadership doesn’t care to admit. The forces of the occupation assassinated more than one leader in Hamas, and [the terror group’s investigations] never got to the truth.”