Damascus, January 31: As efforts are underway to find the clues of the grisly killing of a top Hamas leader in Dubai, the Palestinian resistance group has blamed Israel for the murder.
“Mahmud Abdel Rauf Al-Mabhouh died a martyr in Dubai on January 20, 2010,” Hamas said in a statement.
“We hold Israel responsible for the assassination of our brother and leader.”
Mabhouh, 50, was found dead in a hotel on Tuesday, a day after he arrived in the city.
His brother said that Mabhouh had been killed by electric shock after an electrical appliance was held to his head, charging Israel’s Mossad intelligence service of being behind the killing.
“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,” Fayed Al-Mabhouh told.
“Material was sent to a Paris laboratory which confirmed he was killed by electric shock.”
The Hamas leader was laid to rest late Friday in the Syrian capital Damascus, where he had lived for years.
“We will get revenge for the blood of this great and pure man,” Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal said during the funeral attended by thousands of mourners.
Born in the Gaza Strip, Mabhouh, a member of Hamas armed wing, Ezz al-Din al-Qassam, has been living in Syria since 1989.
He is said to have engineered the capture of two Israeli soldiers during a Palestinian uprising in the 1980s.
The father of four was imprisoned several times by Israeli occupation forces. Israel razed his home in Gaza.
Mabhoub was reportedly targeted in the past.
Months ago, he was taken in a coma to a hospital in Damascus where doctors said he had been poisoned, his brother said.
Mossad
The Dubai government said a group of European passport holders are believed to be behind the killing.
“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,” the government said in a statement.
“The culprits left a trace behind that points to them and will help in chasing and arresting them.”
Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said Mabhoub’s assassins arrived in Dubai as part of Israeli Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau’s entourage.
“A week before the assassination Uzi Landau visited the Emirates and he may have had people traveling with him under false names and additional citizenships,” he told.
Landau recently took part in an environmental convention in Abu-Dhabi.
Israeli officials have so far declined to comment on the murder.
“The Israeli side is accustomed never to declare the crimes it commits, because it does not want to commit itself to diplomatic obligations or international law,” Zahar 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.
Hamas Politburo chief Meshaal was himself poisoned in 1997 by Mosaad agents in Amman.
-Agencies