Mossad

by Michael Bar-Zohar

  According to foreign sources, the Mossad now started to plan Mughniyeh’s killing. Meir Dagan summoned his best people, including the head of Caesarea, the commander of the Kidon team, and several other senior officers dealing with the Mughniyeh file. It soon became clear that there was no way to hit Mughniyeh in a non-Muslim country. He very rarely traveled to the West, and felt safe only in Iran and Syria. The Israelis knew any action on their territory would mean great risks. True, Israel had operated in Arab countries in the past and carried out coups in Beirut during its Operation Wrath of God; its commandos had even gone as far as Tunis, where they allegedly killed the terrorist leader Abu Jihad. But Tehran and Damascus were more suspicious, more heavily armed and dangerous than Beirut or Tunis. On the other hand, Meir Dagan knew the tremendous impact a successful operation would have. The killing of the most lethal terrorist leader in Damascus would prove that nobody can escape the long arm of the Mossad. The refuge and fortress of Israel’s enemies would spread confusion, fear, and insecurity among the rest of the terrorist leaders.

  According to the London Independent daily, the plan that emerged from the discussions at Mossad headquarters was based on the probability of Mughniyeh coming to Damascus on February 12, 2008. On that day, he was supposed to meet Iranian and Syrian officials who were to participate in the celebration of the anniversary of the Iranian revolution.

  After the possibilities had been studied, it was decided that the operation would be carried out by placing a rigged vehicle directly beside Mughniyeh’s car.

  The Mossad now plunged into frantic activity to get detailed intelligence from all its sources, including foreign services: Would Mughniyeh indeed come to Damascus? And if he did—what identity would he choose? In what car would he come? Where would he stay? Who would accompany him? At what time would he arrive at the planned meeting with the Syrian and Iranian representatives? Would the Syrian authorities be informed of his arrival? Would the Hezbollah leaders know about his planned trip?

  The report that tipped the scales in favor of the assassination project came from a very reliable source. It confirmed Mughniyeh’s intention to travel to Damascus. That information was corroborated, according to the Lebanese El-Balad newspaper, by agents who planted tracking devices in the cars of Mughniyeh and the Hezbollah leaders.

  The well-oiled machine of Caesarea came in at this point. By labyrinthine routes, the various Kidon teams arrived in Damascus. A special team smuggled the explosives into the Syrian capital.

  At the last moment, new, crucial information was reported by a veteran Mossad informer. Whenever he came to Damascus, the report stated, Mughniyeh would meet his mistress. For the first time, the Mossad spymasters learned that Mughniyeh was having a secret affair. The pretty woman, Nihad Haidar, expected Mughniyeh in a discreet apartment in the city. Nihad knew the dates of Mughniyeh’s arrival in Damascus in advance, from Beirut or from Tehran. He used to visit their love nest by himself, dismissing his bodyguards and his driver beforehand.

  Urgent messages alerted the watchers who were already in place. Will Mughniyeh visit his lover this time as well? Does the owner of the apartment know that he is coming?

  On the eve of the operation, the members of the hit team arrived in Damascus. They flew to the Syrian capital from various European cities. According to the Independent, the team numbered three agents: one came from Paris on an Air France flight; the second took off from Milan with Alitalia, and the third used a short flight from Amman with Royal Jordanian. The three agents’ false papers indicated that they were businessmen, two of them in the car trade and the third a travel agent. They declared on arrival that they had come to spend a short vacation in Syria, and passed through immigration without any problems. They drove to the city separately and got together only after making sure that they were not followed. They later met with some auxiliaries, who had arrived from Beirut, and were taken to a concealed garage, where a rented car was waiting and, beside it, a load of explosives that included plastic charges and tiny metal balls.

  The three hit men locked themselves in the garage, prepared the explosive charge, and placed it in the rented car. The charge was not placed—as certain newspapers would later claim—in the headrest of Mughniyeh’s car, but in the radio compartment of the rented vehicle.

  Another team of Mossad watchers waited for Mughniyeh’s arrival from Beirut. Their role was to stick to him, hang close to the apartment building where he would meet his mistress, and report about his departure. They had to follow him and make sure he arrived at the meeting in Kfar Sousa. Among the people he was to meet there were the new Iranian ambassador to Damascus and the most secretive man in Syria, General Muhammad Suleiman. Suleiman was, among others, in charge of transferring arms from Iran and Syria to the Hezbollah, and he maintained close relations with Imad Mughniyeh. (Suleiman, who had been involved in the secret Syrian nuclear project, had only six months to live; he would be mysteriously assassinated on August 2, during a dinner with friends at his beach house. See chapter 18.)

  That same evening, the Iranian embassy had scheduled a celebration of the anniversary of the revolution at the Iranian cultural center at Kfar Sousa, quite close to the safe house where Mughniyeh was to meet the Iranian and Syrian officials. He decided, though, not to participate in the festivities, only to confer with his partners and leave Damascus.

  On February 12, in the morning, the Mossad teams were in place. The watchers took position around the apartment building, Mughniyeh’s first destination. In the late afternoon, they reported that Mughniyeh had arrived in Nihad’s apartment—and in the evening they informed their superiors that he had set out on his way to his second destination. They hoped it would be his last.

  The Pajero crossed Damascus and arrived in Kfar Sousa. The watchers followed Mughniyeh, continuously reporting his moves. The rigged car had been brought to the area where Mughniyeh would park. The activation signal was going to be given from a great distance by means of electronic equipment. The agents who had rigged the car had left the place long ago and were on their way to the airport.

  The electronic sensors followed the silver SUV. It stopped. An auxiliary parked the rigged car close to the silver Pajero.

  Shortly before ten P.M., a thunderous explosion shook the Kfar Sousa neighborhood, not far from an Iranian school (empty at this hour) and by a public park. Exactly at the moment when Mughniyeh got out of his SUV, the car beside him exploded.

  Mughniyeh was dead.

  His death shook the Hezbollah to the core; it was a terrible blow to the Syrian government, only a few months after its secret nuclear reactor had been pulverized.

  Six months after Mughniyeh’s death, in November 2008, the Lebanese authorities announced the discovery of a spy ring working for the Mossad. One of the people arrested, fifty-year-old Ali Jarrah from the Bekaa Valley, had worked for the Mossad for the last twenty years for a monthly salary of $7,000. He was accused of traveling to Syria frequently, on missions for the Mossad. In February 2008, a few days before the operation, he had traveled to Kfar Sousa. The Lebanese services that arrested Jarrah discovered a cache of sophisticated photography equipment, a video camera, and a GPS, expertly concealed in his car. Jarrah broke under interrogation and confessed that his Mossad handlers had instructed him to watch, photograph, and collect information about the neighborhoods Mughniyeh was about to visit, including the love nest where he met with Nihad.

  Israel denied any connection to the assassination, but the Hezbollah spokesmen repeatedly accused “the Israeli Zionists” of the murder of “the Jihad hero, who died as a shahid (martyr).”

  The U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack did not share that view. He described Mughniyeh as “a cold-blooded killer, a mass murderer, and a terrorist responsible for ending countless lives.”

  “The world,” McCormack concluded, “is a better place without him.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The Cameras Were Rolling

  In early January 2010
, two black Audi A-6 cars sailed through the fortified gate of a gray building perched on a hill in North Tel Aviv. The building, called “the College,” was actually Mossad headquarters. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was welcomed by the ramsad, Meir Dagan, when he came out of the second car. A short while earlier, Netanyahu had extended Dagan’s appointment by another year.

  Dagan and the Mossad heads felt upbeat and confident after the success of their last operations: the destruction of the Syrian reactor, the killings of Mughniyeh and Suleiman. What was urgent now was to sever another link between Iran and the terrorists, and that link had a name: Al-Mabhouh. According to the journalist Ronen Bergman, the Mossad code name for getting Al-Mabhouh was “Plasma Screen.”

  In the briefing room, Dagan and his senior aides presented their plan for the killing of Mahmoud Abdel Rauf Al-Mabhouh, a leader of Hamas and the linchpin in the system of smuggling weapons from Iran via Sudan, Egypt, and the Sinai Peninsula into the Gaza strip. Al-Mabhouh, Dagan’s men said, would be killed in Dubai, one of the United Arab Emirates on the Persian Gulf.

  Netanyahu approved the execution of Plasma Screen, and the preparations started right away. The plan was to kill Al-Mabhouh in a hotel room in Dubai. The London Sunday Times reported that the members of the Mossad hit team rehearsed the killing in a Tel Aviv hotel without notifying hotel management.

  Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, a.k.a. “Abu Abed,” was born in 1960 in the Jabalia refugee camp, in the north of the Gaza strip. In the late seventies, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood and, as a fervent Muslim, took part in sabotaging Arab cafés where gambling was practiced. In 1986, he was arrested by the Israeli Army for possession of an AK-47 assault rifle, but was released after less than a year and joined the Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigade, the military arm of Hamas.

  Al-Mabhouh’s commander, Salah Shehadeh, tasked him and several other Hamas terrorists with a special mission: kidnapping and killing Israeli soldiers. On February 16, 1989, Al-Mabhouh and another Hamas member stole a car, dressed as ultra-Orthodox Jews, and offered a lift to a soldier, Avi Sasportas, who was standing at a crossroads, trying to hitch a ride home. As Sasportas entered their car, Al-Mabhouh turned back and shot him in the face. The soldier was buried by Al-Mabhouh and his acolytes, after they photographed themselves with the body. Three months after murdering Sasportas, Al-Mabhouh and other Hamas members abducted another soldier, Ilan Saadon, at the Re’em crossroads and murdered him as well. Later, in an Al-Jazeera interview, Al-Mabhouh admitted his part in the assassinations and in burying the dead soldiers.

  After the second murder, Al-Mabhouh escaped to Egypt, then to Jordan, and continued his terrorist activities, mostly by smuggling weapons and explosives into Gaza. Back in Cairo, he was arrested by the Egyptians, spent most of 2003 in an Egyptian jail, and later escaped to Syria. He now was labeled a dangerous terrorist, wanted by the police of Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. He was regarded by his superiors as a gifted organizer and climbed the Hamas hierarchy, focusing most of his efforts in smuggling weapons from Iran to the Gaza strip.

  Al-Mabhouh realized that he was wanted by the Mossad because of his functions; he also knew that Israel would not forgive and forget the murder of its two soldiers. He took strict precautions, changed identities often, and posed as a businessman traveling between Middle East cities for his legitimate dealings. He told a friend that, when staying in a hotel, he used to barricade his room door with armchairs “to prevent bad surprises.”

  In a rare interview he gave to the Al-Jazeera network, Al-Mabhouh appeared with his head covered with a black cloth. “They tried to hit me three times,” he said, “and they almost succeeded. Once in Dubai, once in Lebanon—six months ago—and a third time in Syria, two months ago, after the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh. That’s the price to be paid by all those who fight the Israelis.”

  Al-Mabhouh actually gave the interview against his will; he thought it was an unnecessary risk but had to obey the explicit orders of the Hamas leadership. Some were to assert later that the interview helped the Mossad to find him. Al-Mabhouh had agreed to appear in front of the cameras on one condition: that his face would be completely blurred. After the recording of the interview, the videotape was sent to Gaza for inspection. It turned out that the distorting of his face failed, and he was instructed to record the interview again. The broadcast of the new interview was postponed (it would be aired only after Al-Mabhouh’s death). Al-Mabhouh asked what happened to the first recording, and was told that the videotape was kept in the Hamas archives. Some believe that this tape made its way into the hands of the agents who were trying to find him.

  A few weeks after the recording, a senior member of Hamas got a phone call from an Arab who claimed to be connected with a group that specialized in arms-smuggling and money-laundering. He made weapons-hungry Hamas some offers they could not refuse, and asked to meet Al-Mabhouh in Dubai. It was strange that he had chosen Dubai as a meeting place; the bustling city was actually the place where Al-Mabhouh was meeting his Iranian counterparts. Perhaps this mysterious phone call was Al-Mabhouh’s death sentence.

  And then, an unprecedented episode in the history of the spook wars: the elimination of Plasma Screen was filmed, recorded, and immortalized by closed-circuit security cameras, installed all over Dubai, from the airport counters all the way down to the hotel lobbies, hallways, and elevators.

  These tapes are a unique document of the unfolding of the operation and its subsequent stages: they allowed hundreds of millions of spectators throughout the world, comfortably sprawled in their armchairs, to follow a secret, deadly operation of a hit team.

  Monday, January 18, 2010.

  Several Mossad agents land in Dubai. They are the precursors of a large team of twenty-seven agents that would trickle into Dubai in the next twenty-four hours. Twelve of them would carry British passports, four French, four Australian, one German, and six Irish.

  The agents check into different hotels in the city.

  Tuesday, January 19, 2010.

  12:09 A.M.—two Mossad agents, balding, forty-three-year-old Michael Bodenheimer, carrying a German passport, and his friend James Leonard, carrying a British passport, land in Dubai. The two of them, according to the local police, are the advance team of the group charged with killing Al-Mabhouh.

  12:30 A.M.—the operation commander, Kevin Daveron, sporting a goatee and spectacles, arrives in Dubai aboard a direct flight from Paris. He is accompanied by his deputy, Gail Folliard, a vivacious redhead. Both are carrying Irish passports.

  01:21 A.M.—Gail Folliard checks into the exclusive hotel Jumeriah and gets a room on the eleventh floor. When asked by the reception clerk for her home address, she answers without batting an eye: 78 Memmier Road, Dublin, Ireland. It would later be established that this address was nonexistent.

  01:31 A.M.—Kevin Daveron, the commander, joins his deputy and checks into the Jumeriah. He gets room 3308.

  02:29 A.M.—Peter Elvinger, the operation logistics coordinator, arrives in Dubai with a French passport. He is slim, bearded, wearing stylish glasses. According to the police, he carries a “suspicious” case.

  02:36 A.M.—at the airport, Peter meets another member of the team and they leave together for a hotel in the city.

  10:15 A.M.—Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh departs from Damascus to Dubai, on a direct Emirates airline flight. In Dubai, he is supposed to coordinate with an Iranian envoy the smuggling of another weapons shipment to Gaza.

  10:30 A.M.—Peter, the operation coordinator, leaves the hotel and meets the hit team at a big shopping center.

  10:50 A.M.—Kevin and Gail, the commander and his deputy, join the meeting at the shopping center. Kevin is not wearing his glasses, and his small mustache has vanished.

  12:18 P.M.—the meeting is over, and the team disperses. Kevin returns to the Jumeriah Hotel and checks out. The security cameras show him entering another hotel, where he puts on a wig, eyeglasses, and a false mustache.

  02:12 P.M.—two agents dressed in
tennis outfits enter the luxurious Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel. They are watchers, waiting for Al-Mabhouh, who is supposed to arrive in the next hour.

  03:12 P.M.—Gail also leaves the Jumeriah Hotel. For the night spent in the hotel, she pays the sum of $400.

  03:15 P.M.—Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh lands in Dubai. At the immigration booth, he shows a false Iraqi passport and declares he is in the textile import business.

  03:25 P.M.—Gail moves to another hotel, where she changes clothes, makes up her face, and puts on a wig.

  03:28 P.M.—Al-Mabhouh arrives at the Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel. At check-in, he asks for a room with sealed windows and no terrace. He is given room 230 on the second floor. He takes the elevator to the second floor, unaware of the two Mossad watchers dressed as tennis players, who ride the elevator with him.

  03:30 P.M.—the watchers report, by a special transmission device, that Al-Mabhouh has entered his room and the room facing his has the number 237.

  03:53 P.M.—Peter, the coordinator, arrives in Al-Mabhouh’s hotel and walks into the business center. He calls reception and reserves room 237.

  04:03 P.M.—a new watchers team relieves the first and waits for Al-Mabhouh to leave his room.

  04:14 P.M.—all the members of the hit team are now in the Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel.

  04:23 P.M.—Al-Mabhouh leaves his room, surveys the lobby to make sure that the place is “clean,” and leaves the hotel. The watchers follow him.

  04:24 P.M.—the watchers transmit to the team commander details about the car that has taken Al-Mabhouh downtown.

  04:27 P.M.—Peter, the coordinator, enters the lobby and gives Kevin Daveron his case, which probably contains the objects needed for Al-Mabhouh’s assassination.

  04:33 P.M.—Peter goes to the reception desk, checks in, and receives the key for room 237, facing Al-Mabhouh’s room.

  04:40 P.M.—Peter gives the room key to Kevin, and leaves the hotel for an unknown destination.