Photo Gallery The Dubai Operation
It was a spectacular attack straight out of a James Bond film. On Jan. 19, 2010, a team of Mossad agents killed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a Palestinian weapons merchant who had killed an Israeli soldier 20 years previously. But the kill team made several key mistakes allowing them to be quickly identified. This image is from an observation camera in the hotel where the attack took place.
Most of the attackers used forged passports from European countries. One agent managed to get a real German passport under the name of Michael Bodenheimer from an office in Cologne.
This photo, made available to journalists by Hamas, shows Mahmoud al-Mabhouh's body in a hospital in Damascus. Not long before his murder, he had given an interview to Al-Jazeera in which he described his 1989 murder of two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, in detail.
Dubai Police Chief Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim was outraged that the Mossad attack took place right under his nose. He ultimately releases many images and details of the investigation to the global press, including this image, from a hotel surveillance camera, which allegedly shows two of the Mossad agents.
A first attempt to take al-Mabhouh's life failed in 2009. In Dubai, the Mossad left nothing to chance and sent a team of 20 agents, including Gail Folliard, shown here checking into al-Mabhouh's hotel in Dubai.
These two agents, dressed as tennis players, followed al-Mabhouh to his room initially to ascertain where he was staying. Dubai Police Chief Tamim described their disguise as a glaring mistake. No real tennis player, he says, would walk around with his racket out of its case.
Soon after the murder, the Mossad agents began quickly leaving Dubai. Here, Peter Elvinger, presumed to be the leader of the commando, is seen getting ready to board a plane out of the country.
The actual kill-team entered the hotel at 6:34 p.m. on Jan. 19, 2010. There were two pairs of agents, all four of them wearing baseball caps and carrying backpacks and shopping bags.
A poster honoring al-Mabhouh has been erected in the Palestinian refugee camp Jabaliya. Dubai Police Chief Tamim was reportedly furious when he learned that Hamas had sent him to Dubai under an assumed identity without informing him first.
