AP, 18 Feb 10: The death of a Hamas operative in Dubai at the hands of a squad of burly hit men conjures up images of the string of killings that followed the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and a bungled attempt to poison a Hamas leader in Jordan 13 years ago.
Israel’s Mossad spy agency – the prime suspect in the death of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last month in Dubai – has known both triumph and embarrassment in decades of covert warfare, and the latest episode would appear to include elements of each. The killers, whoever they are, got their man and escaped. But they were caught on video and left behind what appears to be significant evidence: A Dubai police force that proved competent perhaps beyond the agents’ expectations found that at least seven of them used the names of real Israelis with European passports. . . .
. . . . The Mossad places far more emphasis on special operations like assassinations than intelligence agencies in most other countries, said Ronen Bergman, author of a book on Israeli covert operations against Iran. “This emphasis is because of Israel’s existential fears. This is not policy – it’s mindset, the feeling that the Mossad is the final frontier for defending the national security of the state of Israel,” he said. . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 220–An Introduction to Israeli Intelligence and Counterintelligence Methodologies
AFP, 18 Feb 10: A retired member of Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces was sentenced on Thursday to death for having spied for Israel and for his involvement in the murder of two Palestinian militant leaders. Mahmoud Qassem Rafeh, 63, was convicted of “collaboration and espionage on behalf of the Israeli enemy,” according to the verdict handed down by a military tribunal.He was also convicted of involvement in the 2006 car bomb murder in the southern coastal town of Sidon of brothers Mahmoud and Nidal Mazjoub, members of the Islamic Jihad group.A second defendant, Hussein Sleiman Khattab, was convicted in absentia. . .
. . . . Rafeh remains accused of the murder of Hezbollah officials Ali Hassan Dib in 1998 and Ali Hussein Saleh in 2003, as well as the 2002 murder of Jihad Jibril, son of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command leader Ahmad Jibril. The trial for those killings is still underway. Rafeh was arrested in 2006 and confessed last year to having collaborated with Israeli intelligence agents from 1993. . . . .
Der Spiegel, 18 Feb 10: Many intelligence agencies are suspected of carrying out assassinations, but few are as notorious for doing so as Israel’s Mossad. Although the agency has become legendary for its amazing successes, it has still had its share of failures. If the Mossad was behind the recent killing in Dubai, it might be another blemish on the agency’s reputation.
In 1955, seven years after the Israeli state was founded, the philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz wrote a letter to then Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. In it, he complained that innocent Palestinians were being killed in Israeli operations. “I do not agree with you,” responded Ben-Gurion. “While it is good that there be a world full of peace, fraternity, justice, and honesty, it is even more important that we be in it.”
This notion of a well-fortified state that eliminates its enemies by force whenever possible is still supported by a large majority of Israelis. Such actions include assassinations carried out by Israel’s military and the Mossad, its foreign intelligence service. . . . The awe the Mossad inspires among intelligence agencies is mostly due to its history of ambitious operations. It has freed hostages from hopeless situations; it has found a way to bring a Russian MiG-21 fighter jet to Israel at the request of its political leaders; and, during the Cold War, it was known to supply the CIA with classified papers stolen from the Soviets. . . .
♦ CI CENTRE COURSE: 220–An Introduction to Israeli Intelligence and Counterintelligence Methodologies
STRATFOR, 18 Feb 10: . . . . Document-fraud investigations are a very useful weapon in the counterterrorism arsenal. Foreigners who wish to travel to the United States to conduct a terrorist attack must either have a valid passport from their country of citizenship and a valid U.S. visa, or just a valid passport from their home country if they are a citizen of a country that does not require a visa for short-term trips (called visa-waiver countries).
In some early jihadist attacks against the United States, such as the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the operatives dispatched to conduct the attacks made very clumsy attempts at document fraud. In that case, the two operational commanders dispatched from Afghanistan to conduct the attack arrived at New York’s Kennedy Airport after having used photo-substituted passports (passports where the photographs are literally switched) of militants from visa-waiver countries who died while fighting in Afghanistan. Ahmed Ajaj (a Palestinian) used a Swedish passport in the name of Khurram Khan, and Abdul Basit (a Pakistani also known as Ramzi Yousef) used a British passport in the name of Mohamed Azan. Ajaj attempted to enter through U.S. Immigration at Kennedy Airport using the obviously photo-substituted passport and was arrested on the spot. Basit used the altered British passport to board the aircraft in Karachi, Pakistan, but upon arrival in New York he used a fraudulently obtained but genuine Iraqi passport in the name of Ramzi Yousef to claim political asylum and was released pending his asylum hearing.
But the jihadist planners learned from amateurish cases like Ajaj’s and that of Ghazi Ibrahim Abu Mezer, a Palestinian who attempted to conduct a suicide attack against the New York subway system. U.S. immigration officials arrested him on three occasions in the Pacific Northwest as he attempted to cross into the United States illegally from Canada. By the Millennium Bomb Plot in late 1999, Ahmed Ressam, an Algerian who initially entered Canada using a photo-substituted French passport, had obtained a genuine Canadian passport using a fraudulent baptismal certificate. He then used that genuine passport to attempt to enter the United States in order to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. Ressam was caught not because of his documentation but because of his demeanor — and an alert customs inspector prevented him from entering the country.
So by the time the 9/11 attacks occurred, we were seeing groups like al Qaeda preferring to use genuine travel documents rather than altered or counterfeit documents. . . . . .
FrontPage/Nonie Darwish, 18 Feb 10: Remember the Muslim Television executive, Muzzammil Hassan, who decapitated his wife near Buffalo, New York? His TV station, Bridges TV, was created to promote the idea that Islam is a religion of peace and friendship. This station’s goals perfectly fit with the intense Saudi PR machine, which is spending tons of money to change the image of Islam in the West — even if it takes denials, fabrications and outright lies.
Several years ago, I debated Othman Shibly, a U.S. citizen of Syrian origin and a Sharia expert, on a Bridges TV program directed by his son, Hassan Shibly. Both bearded men are fierce apologists for Radical Islam and defend Sharia. Dr. Shibly holds a Sufi/Radical Islamist ideology and hides behind a thin veneer of “moderate” Islam, but that façade does not fool someone like myself from the same background. The Shiblys make no attempt to repudiate the claims of men like Hizbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, or other radical Islamists like Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, the Mufti of the Syrian Ministry of Religion under the regimes of both Hafiz and Bashar Assad and Kuftaro’s protégé, Sheikh Rajab Deeb. My interview with the two men was never aired and the Shiblys never sent me a copy of the taped interview as they promised.
That brings me to an email I recently received from a concerned American mother, who said that she was horrified at what her child is being taught by Islamic guest speakers at her child’s high school, Clarence High School in Clarence, New York. The speakers are none other than Hassan and Othman Shibly, who are now lecturing our kids on Islam at New York state public schools. That is done with the help of politically correct apologist educators. . . . .
