London's Daily Mail reports that the Mossad gave the British intelligence agency MI6 advance notice that it planned to liquidate 'Palestinian' terrorist and arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month. MI6 was tipped off that Israeli agents were going to carry out an 'overseas operation' using fake British passports, it was claimed last night.
A member of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, said the Foreign Office was also told hours before a Hamas terrorist chief was assassinated in Dubai.
The tip-off did not say who the target would be or even where the hit squad would be in action.
But the claim from a credible source that the Government had some prior knowledge of the abuse of UK passports will strengthen calls for ministers to come clean about what they knew and when.
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The Mossad man said Israeli intelligence chiefs understand British authorities will have to 'slap them on the wrist' and added: 'The British government has to be seen to be going through the motions.'
The Israeli's claims contradict Foreign Office assertions that the UK knew nothing of the affair until shortly before the Dubai authorities went public over the assassination earlier this week.
However officials in the Gulf state have claimed that British ministers may have been alerted by Dubai last month about the use of the passports.
If MI6 received a tip-off from Mossad it is not certain it would have been passed to Foreign Secretary David Miliband, particularly if it was vague.
Intelligence officers may have preferred to wait before alerting ministers. But any suggestion that officials turned a blind eye to an extra-judicial killing will strengthen calls for a public inquiry into the UK's involvement in the war on terrorism.
Intelligence sources say al-Mabhouh was lured to a meeting in Dubai by two men who had worked with him in Hamas in Gaza.
He did not realise they had defected to the more moderate Fatah, bitter enemies of Hamas, and were secretly working with the Israelis.
Two Palestinian men are in custody in Dubai. The director of the Dubai Police forensic medicine department revealed yesterday that finding the cause of al-Mabhouh's death had been the most difficult post mortem he had ever done.
British-trained Dr Fawzi Benomran said the killers had put his body in bed and covered it, to make it appear he had died in his sleep.
But he and his team established that death was caused by 'suffocation by smothering, most probably with a pillow'.
Israel Matzav: Report: Mossad gave British MI6 notice of Dubai action; Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite
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