- Palestine
- February 22, 2010
- 2 minutes read
UAE summons EU ambassadors to brief them on Dubai hotel crime.
The United Arab Emirates summoned European Union (EU) ambassadors to brief them on the assassination of senior Hamas official Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai, especially since the killers used European passport to commit the crime.
The Emirates news agency said that the minister of state for foreign affairs, Dr Anwar Gargash, summoned the ambassadors to the UAE to brief them on developments in the case and to seek their continued cooperation with the investigation.
“The abuse of passports poses a global threat, affecting the countries’ national security as well as the personal security of travelers,” UAE foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah Al-Nahayan said.
“We are fully committed to bring those responsible to justice,” Al-Nahayan added.
In the same context, the Daily Telegraph newspaper quoted British foreign affairs officials as saying that Israeli immigration officials at Tel Aviv airport secretly copied the British passports which were then used by the Mossad hit squad which assassinated Mabhouh.
The six British citizens whose identities were stolen and used by the killers all had their passports taken away from them briefly during routine checks at the airport, the newspaper said.
This new revelation will put further pressure on the Israeli government which has been at the center of a growing diplomatic storm over its possible involvement in the murder of Mabhouh in Dubai last month.
The newspaper noted that all six British passports were not biometric, which means they did not have a computer chip embedded in them and so the fraud was relatively easy.