Dubai, June 20: Dubai, where a Hamas official was murdered in January in an assassination blamed on Israel’s notorious Mossad spy agency, is to have security cameras “everywhere,” the police chief was quoted as saying on Sunday.
The bustling Gulf city currently has 25,000 security cameras, but “surveillance needs to be ramped up to meet the growing requirements of an expanding city,” Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan told The National newspaper.
“We need to work according to a well-studied strategic plan and not only react to events as they come along… We will have cameras everywhere,” said Khalfan of the 136-million-dollar (110-million-euro) project.
Hamas commander Mahmud al-Mabhuh was assassinated at a hotel in the emirate, and Khalfan said police were able to track down the suspected murderers with the help of security cameras.
“With the al-Mabhuh murder we were able to play back time through the footage captured by cameras,” said Khalfan, adding they analysed 1,700 hours of images and “were able to pull the strings together and identify the suspects.”
—Agencies