Love of the Land: Spinning the death of a terrorist

Spinning the death of a terrorist

Petra Marquardt-Bigman
The Warped Mirror/JPost
28 February '10

The media continue to give prominent coverage to the investigation of the death of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, whose body was found some six weeks ago in a Dubai luxury hotel. Dubai's police authorities have boasted that it took them just 24 hours to come close to solving the case, and their ostensible professionalism and efficiency have been widely praised after the release of extensive CCTV footage that supposedly shows various teams involved in al-Mabhouh's assassination.

However, it seems that few in the media have been willing to notice what was rightly highlighted in a report by Global Post correspondent Tom Hundley, who pointed out that Dubai "has become a kind of Arabian Big Easy where a senior operative in a powerful political organization can be assassinated in a five-star hotel - and the crime will be hushed up for more than a week while the powers-that-be decide how the story will be spun."

Indeed, it is definitely noteworthy that almost ten days elapsed before Mabhouh's assassination was announced by the UAE government's official press agency, which reported on the day of his funeral that he had been killed by an "experienced criminal gang."

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Love of the Land: Spinning the death of a terrorist