Kill Teams

A short history of the most memorable state-ordered hits in foreign lands.

BY JOSHUA E. KEATING | MAY 3, 2011

MAHMOUD AL-MABHOUH

In: Dubai

By: Israel

Year: 2010

The act: On Jan. 19, 2010, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas military commander wanted for the killing of two Israeli soldiers and suspected of being the primary link between the Palestinian group and Iran's Al-Quds Force, checked into the Al Bustan Rotana hotel near the Dubai airport. After leaving the hotel for dinner that night with unknown parties, he returned and was joined in the elevator up to his room by two men -- part of an 11-strong team that had come to kill him. Mabhouh was escorted to an empty hotel room where he was reportedly sedated and then suffocated with a pillow. The team made it out of the country safely and the body was discovered the next day.

Dubai police issued arrest warrants for 11 individuals, many of whom were caught on surveillance cameras. It turned out that the assassins had used faked British, Irish, Australian, French, and German passports to disguise their identities. Israel's Mossad spy agency never acknowledged involvement with the killing, but it was widely assumed to be responsible for the operation. The resulting firestorm of criticism even had some in the Israeli media calling for the service's head to be fired over the embarrassingly public incident. A number of countries, including Australia and Britain, expelled Israeli diplomats over the use of faked passports.

David Silverman/Getty Images; MAURICIO DUENAS/AFP/Getty Images; DOD via Getty Images; KARIM JAAFAR/AFP/Getty Images; ABBAS MOMANI/AFP/Getty Images; CRIS BOURONCLE/AFP/Getty Images; OFF/AFP/Getty Images

 SUBJECTS:
 

Joshua Keating is an associate editor at Foreign Policy.

EW66

7:56 PM ET

May 3, 2011

correction

Hakimullah isn't dead, FP. Those reports proved false.

 

JOHN FRANCE

1:08 AM ET

May 4, 2011

Private Job

That sounds more like a private job than a state issued hit. Especially in such a public place.

John France

 

WALKING WOUNDED

3:33 AM ET

May 4, 2011

Castro, Hussein, Gadaffy hits... were chopped liver?

I grant that none of these men actually died from US efforts. But major attempts were made, and 'decapitation' strikes aimed at the Arab bad guys involved considerable effort and collatoral deaths. Patrice Lamumba also made it to the WH level of targeting, according to sworn testimony to Congress. The defenestration of Vaclev Havel's father by Soviet operatives was left out.

 

NICOLAS19

8:30 AM ET

May 4, 2011

see the language

The victim is always a guy "with link to X", "associated with Y", "link between Z"... they have never been convicted of anything, the murderers didn't even try to bring them to trial.
You have a drugged suspect, incapable of self defense. What do you do? Suffocate him cold blooded!
You know the whereabouts of a $25M man. What do you do? Drop a half-a-ton bomb on his head!

See where I'm going? The narrative always suggests that these people were about to do something terrible, and we should be thankful that the murderers have prevented it by doing something even more terrible! Good job, America, lets hail your personal Gestapo.

 

PALMER

10:19 AM ET

May 4, 2011

Gestapo? Please.

First, the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh case has nothing to do with the U.S. No one has suggested it was the CIA--it appears to be an assassination by the Israeli secret services. So it might be somebody's Gestapo, but not America's.

And you have to be spectacularly ignorant of what the Gestapo actually was to compare anything the United States has done to what the Gestapo did. Is the U.S. blameless in its international conduct? No, sadly. Does, say, overthrowing the Iranian prime minister or complicity in the coup against Salvador Allende begin to rise to the order of magnitude of the German Nazi death camps? Uh, no.

It seems inhumane to you that al-Mabhouh was sedated before being suffocated? Would a simple garrotte or throat-cutting or a bullet to the back of the head have been more palatable to your refined sensibilities? Al-Mabhouh got a much more humane death than his victims.

And as for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, it was a war, a counter-insurgency, and therefore he was a legitimate military target who was killed during an active conflict. No immorality involved in this attack. Aside from his deliberate murder of Nicholas Berg, a non-combatant, you seem to have little sympathy for his participation in the murder of innocent Spanish commuters.

The evidence against al-Mabhouh and Zarqawi is indisputable. They richly deserved the consequences of their actions.

 

RIDGE

11:04 AM ET

May 4, 2011

humanitarian intervention anyone?

just as they killed Arafat so too has this man met the same destiny best insurance so it begs the question: why mess with mossad if you can't beat it?? they're obviously good at what they do (not withstanding the "leg up" they receive from their brethren in the US).

For all wannabe al-Mabhouh's make sure that you're prepared for Mossad...cause they will come for you