Gaza City, January 29: The democratically elected Palestinian movement Hamas on Friday accused Israel of the assassination in Dubai last week of a founder of its resistance wing and threatened retaliation.
“Mahmud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhuh died a martyr in Dubai on January 20, 2010 in suspect circumstances,” Hamas said in a statement released in Gaza.
“We hold Israel responsible for the assassination of our brother and leader,” the statement said, adding Hamas would “retaliate for this Zionist crime at the appropriate moment.”
There was no immediate Israeli reaction to the accusation.
The Dubai government said police suspect a criminal gang of mostly European passport holders to be behind the murder, but that they had already fled the country.
“Preliminary investigations indicate that the crime was committed by a professional criminal gang that was following the victim before he came to the United Arab Emirates” on January 19, it said.
Dubai police will work with the Interpol to capture the suspects, it said in a statement, adding that “the culprits left a trace behind that points to them and will help in chasing and arresting them.”
A brother of Mabhuh said that Israel’s Mossad overseas intelligence agency was behind the assasination believed to have been conducted by two people.
“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 was then strangled with pieces of cloth,” Fayeq al-Mabhuh, who lives in the Gaza Strip, said.
“Material was sent to a Paris laboratory which confirmed he was killed by electric shock,” he said.
The military wing of Hamas, Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said it would soon publish “more details of the investigation,” adding that “the Zionist enemy bears complete responsibility for the assassination.”
The Hamas official had already been targeted in the past, his brother said, adding that several months ago he was taken in a coma to a hospital in Damascus where doctors later told him he had been poisoned.
A funeral was held on Friday in the Syrian capital where Mabhuh, a 50-year-old father of four, had been based for many years.
Thousands of mourners attended as Mabhuh’s body, wrapped in a Hamas flag, was lowered into a grave at the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk on the outskirts of Damascus.
His son, Abdel Rauf al-Mabhuh, was among mourners at the solemn ceremony who waved green flags.
The head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, Ismail Haniya, meanwhile, visited Mabhuh’s family in the Jabaliya refugee camp.
In Dubai, the emirate’s police chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan said the murdered man had travelled under another name.
“If we had been told of his presence, we would have provided him with the necessary protection,” he told the Al-Arabiya satellite channel.
Born in Jabaliya, northern Gaza, Mabhuh was one of the founders of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades.
Hamas said Mabhuh was behind the capture of two Israeli soldiers in separate operations in 1989 during the early stages of a 1987-1993 Palestinian uprising.
Mabhuh also masterminded a number of other attacks on Israeli targets and Israeli authorities demolished his home in Gaza in retaliation.
Mabhuh spent several spells in Israeli custody. After his last release, “he spent his life being hounded by the Zionist occupier until he succeeded in leaving the Gaza Strip,” Hamas said.
Over the years, a number of Hamas leaders have died in operations Israel calls “targeted killings.”
In 2004, Hamas founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was killed in an Israeli helicopter gunship attack in Gaza. One month later, another Hamas leader in Gaza, Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, was killed when two missiles hit his car.
—Agencies