Conflict International Limited - Private Investigation Agency

Dubai assassination was a master class in intelligence

10 March 2010, 9:32 am

It is organisations such as Mossad, Mi5 and the CIA that have led the way on intelligence gathering, and as a result an investigation agency such as Conflict International have been heavily influenced by these organisations. Many of the best private investigators or private detectives around the world will have firsthand experience of such organisations. It is not exactly the kind of career that can be taught in a classroom.

There have been enormous and dramatic changes in the use of passports and visas over the last 10 to 15 years. It is no longer so easy to counterfeit, and it is also much harder to alter such documents. The recent assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai is a glaring example of how identities were stolen and used for lethal purposes. The organisation believed to have carried this out is the national intelligence agency for Israel, Mossad.

The history of the organisation does fit the bill. In 1972 eleven Israeli athletes were murdered at Munich Olympics by the terror organisation Black September. Mossad’s retribution was severe, and they set up special teams dedicated to hunting and killing those responsible for the murders.

Today – ironically, in order to prevent terrorists travelling – passports and visas now have RFID (radio frequency identification) chips embedded, making them much harder to forge. These were first embedded by the Malaysian government in 1998, and since then it has been widely adopted around the world, including most European countries, America, Australia and many more. But what does this mean for international espionage? Well, a lot of the lower-level kind of forgeries will diminish and in future it will only be the high-end counterfeiters who will operate.

But this will also mean it will be more difficult for the high-end intelligence agencies to operate. In the future, they will have to obtain documents through bribery and malfeasance. We will see intelligence agencies such as Mossad using documents stolen from people who bear a resemblance to the operatives that they want to send out.

In Pakistan, for example, this is already commonplace: jihadist groups get people to surrender their passports and then use people who look as much as possible like the original holders. This avoids the necessity to try to alter the pictures.

As far as relations between Britain and Israel are concerned, this is unlikely to be a big problem. There may well be some sort of “knock it off” warning from the British to the Israelis, but any big repercussions are doubtful. Things like aggressive Israeli spying against the UK would have much greater repercussions.

In relation to the Dubai operation itself, looking at the tactical breakdown of how they did it gives a glimpse into a very dark world of secrets, lies and cover ups. Some would say that the operation was a complete disaster, after all hitting the front pages cannot be a good thing if you’re a state sponsored spy.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality of it is this operation was an absolute success. It is somewhat amusing overhearing some people describe it as sloppy or badly executed operation. The team had excellent intelligence, they were well prepared, and their behaviour was as cool as a cucumber. These were highly trained operatives who knew exactly what they were doing. They completed their mission and have since scattered around the world with new identities.

The target itself was a current and very serious threat to Israeli security. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh’s death will upset the flow of arms from Iran to Hamas. He was also wanted by the Israeli government for his part in the kidnap and murder of two Israeli soldiers in 1989 which he celebrated by standing on one of the corpses. In a video, taped two weeks before his death, and broadcast on Al-Jazeera in early February, Mabhouh admitted his involvement, saying he had disguised himself as an Orthodox Jew.

As for the future, the uproar will simmer down and Mossad will just get better and change its tradecraft and its counterfeiting, and probably the countries that it uses for cover. Israel will probably look in Latin America and also possibly Mediterranean countries such as Lebanon, Cyprus, or even Italy. They will have to work illegally – but they know how to do it.

Conflict International provides professional private detectives in London and around the UK.