Suspect in Mabhouh assassination arrested in Canada

Dubai Police Chief Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim holds press conference, repeats he is "100 percent sure" Mossad was behind the killing.

By YAAKOV KATZ
dubai police chief tamim khalfan 311 (photo credit: AP)
dubai police chief tamim khalfan 311
(photo credit: AP)
A suspect in January’s assassination of top Hamas operative Ali Mahmoud Mabhouh has been arrested in Canada, Dubai’s police chief Lt.-Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim said on Tuesday.
Tamim told the Al-Arabiya news station that the suspect had been detained in Canada and that Dubai had been asked not to make the arrest public. He had previously said only that the arrest was in a Western country.
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According to Tamim, the suspect arrested was a member of the so-called assassination team that was caught on video in Dubai’s Al-Bustan Rotana hotel, where Mabhouh was killed in January. The suspect he claimed was arrested by Canada is seen in video footage carrying tennis equipment and stepping out of an elevator after Mabhouh.
Canada and Israel refused to comment on the report.
Mabhouh was a cofounder of Hamas’s military wing, Izzadin Kassam, and was the group’s senior operative in charge of smuggling weaponry from Iran, Syria and Lebanon to the Gaza Strip.
In September, Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) director Yuval Diskin told the cabinet that the quality of weapons being smuggled into Gaza has declined significantly since the assassination.