Leaked NSA files: Israel in 2008 murdered Syrian general

Israel was responsible for the 2008 murder of a top security aide of Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to secret US intelligence files.
Brigadier General Mohammed Sleiman was shot in the head and neck on Aug. 1, 2008 by a small team of Israeli commandos as he enjoyed a dinner party at his luxury seaside home on the Syrian coast, said The Intercept website, citing the leaked files.The Israeli military team then escaped by sea.
"The internal National Security Agency document, provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, is the first official confirmation that the assassination of Sleiman was an Israeli military operation," said the website.

Spies that are not loved by other spies

Jeff Stein of the Washington Post writes:
The CIA took an internal poll not long ago about friendly foreign intelligence agencies.
The question, mostly directed to employees of the clandestine service branch, was: Which are the best allies among friendly spy services, in terms of liaison with the CIA, and which are the worst? In other words, who acts like, well, friends?
“Israel came in dead last,” a recently retired CIA official told me the other day.
Not only that, he added, throwing up his hands and rising from his chair, “the Israelis are number three, with China number one and Russia number two,” in terms of how aggressive they are in their operations on U.S. soil.
(...)
As tensions with Iran escalate, according to former CIA officer Philip Giraldi, “Israeli agents have become more aggressive in targeting Muslims living in the United States as well as in operating against critics.”
“There have been a number of cases reported to the FBI about Mossad officers who have approached leaders in Arab-American communities and have falsely represented themselves as ‘U.S. intelligence,’ ” Giraldi wrote recently in American Conservative magazine.

Giraldi’s piece continued, “Mossad officers sought to recruit Arab-Americans as sources willing to inform on their associates and neighbors. The approaches, which took place in New York and New Jersey, were reportedly handled clumsily, making the targets of the operation suspicious.”
“These Arab-Americans turned down the requests for cooperation,” Giraldi added,”and some of the contacts were eventually reported to the FBI, which has determined that at least two of the Mossad officers are, ironically, Israeli Arabs operating out of Israel’s mission to the United Nations in New York under cover as consular assistants.”

Israeli Mossad believed to be behind killing of Hamas operative in Damascus

A Hamas member was killed Wednesday in a suburb of the Syrian capital Damascus, a senior member of the group told AFP, adding that they suspected Israel's spy agency of being behind the attack.

Participants Mossad operation in Dubai

The victim was Kamal Hussein Ghannaje, one of the deputies of Mahmoud Abdel Raouf Al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas military commander who was killed in a Mossad operation  in a Dubai hotel in 2010.

"A group of people entered his home in Qudsaya ... where he was liquidated," the official said. "According to our information, Mossad was behind the assassination." Investigators there said they believed Mossad was behind that murder.

AP adds: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak refused to confirm or deny Israeli involvement in the Ghanaja killing in interviews with Israeli radio stations on Thursday.

The murder of Mabhouh, in 20101,  got much coverage due to the fact that  the police in Dubai managed to collect portraits and videotapes of the more than 20 people involved in this Israeli operation, which was executed with falsified passports of several Western countries. 

Israeli Mossad posed as American CIA in recruiting Iranian dissidents who executed terror attacks

The leader of Jundallah, Abdolmalek Rigi, was arrested in February 2010 by Iranian commandos after the plane on which he was traveling from Karachi to Kyrgyzstan had been forces to land in the Caspian region of Iran.    

Mark Perry of Foreign Policy reports that Israeli Mossad agents posing as CIA operatives recruited Iranian Sunni dissidents affiliated with the organisation Jundallah in Iranian Baluchistan to engage in acts of terror inside Iran.
The Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives — what is commonly referred to as a “false flag” operation.
 It is a new amazing revelation concerning theft of identity, but not the first of its kind as far as the Mossad is concerned.In an operation that was widely publicized  a squad of Mossad operatives killed Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, an official of the Hamas movement in charge of buying weapons in a hotel in Dubai in January 2010. It turned out that the Mossad agents used false pasports belonging to citizens from the UK, Ireland, Germany, France and Austria.
Perry's revelation is based on conversations with several former and active CIA operatives. The recruiting of the Jundallah members by the Mossad occurred in 2007 and 2008. It is not known if Israel is still using contacts with Jundallah. One of them said: "It's amazing what the Israelis thought they could get away with. Their recruitment activities were nearly in the open. They apparently didn't give a damn what we thought."

The fact that the Israelis were posing as CIA-agents led to several Iranian accusations vis à vis the USA and the CIA that it was backing terrorist operations by Jundallah. Jundallah carried out a string of high-profile attacks in Sistan-Baluchistan in 2008-2009, including a suicide bombing near the Pakistani border that killed 42 people, including six senior Revolutionary Guards commanders, and a bombing in a Shia mosque in Zahedan that killed 25 people.
The leader of Jundallah, Abdolmalek Rigi, was captured by the Iranians in february 2010 after Iran had been tipped by Pakistan that he was on a flight from Karachi to Kyrgyzstan. The plane was forced to land in Iran and Rigi was taken. He was hanged in June 2010. One month earlier his younger brother Abdolhamid, who had been extradited to Iran by Pakistan, was also hanged. The younger Rigi told his interrogators that his brother had had several meetings in Islamabad and Karachi and even in Europe with American agents.

Perry writes in Foreign Policy that the Iranian accusations led to a number of memos in which CIA involvement was denied and the blame was put on the Mossad. Perry's sources reveal that president Bush, the then American president, was enraged about the reports. "The report sparked White House concerns that Israel's program was putting Americans at risk," one  intelligence officer told Perry. "There's no question that the U.S. has cooperated with Israel in intelligence-gathering operations against the Iranians, but this was different. No matter what anyone thinks, we're not in the business of assassinating Iranian officials or killing Iranian civilians." However, in the end nothing was done, although Perry's source tells him that there were clearly two camps in the administration as to what to do about it. Probably it is not too far fethched to assume that the conservative pro-Israeli camp within Bush's troops (Perle, Wolfowitz, Feith and others) was simply too strong...
 According to Perry Israel's relationship with Jundallah continued to roil the Bush administration until the day it left office, this same intelligence officer noted. Israel's activities jeopardized the administration's fragile relationship with Pakistan, which was coming under intense pressure from Iran to crack down on Jundallah. It also undermined U.S. claims that it would never fight terror with terror, and invited attacks in kind on U.S. personnel.
 The debate over Jundallah was resolved only after Bush left office when, within his first weeks as president, Barack Obama drastically scaled back joint U.S.-Israel intelligence programs targeting Iran, according to multiple serving and retired officers.
 

Egypt uncovers Israeli spy-ring with ramifications in Syria and Lebanon

Syrian reactor destroyed in 2007. Satellite pictures, above taken before, and under after the bombardment.  Wikileaks revealed a cable this week, sent in 2008  by then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in which she confirmed that it was a nuclear reactor which was being built with help of North Korea and that it was destroyed by the Israelis.   

The confessions of an Egyptian accused of spying for Israel have led to three espionage cells being dismantled in Lebanon and Syria, where an agent was executed in November, Cairo newspapers said Friday.
Tareq Abdul Razzak, the 37-year-old owner of an import-export business, is accused of having spied for Israel together with two wanted Israelis.
Egypt, which has a 1979 peace treaty with Israel, informed Lebanon and Syria of his activities in recruiting agents after Abdul Razzak's arrest in May, Al-Masri newspaper said, quoting a security source close to the investigation.
The suspect has allegedly confessed that his two Israeli contacts had tasked him with making visits to Damascus with a fake passport and identity under the guise of business trips.The aim of the missions was to deliver sums of money to a Syrian holding a "sensitive" post with the security services.
Al-Shuruk daily said Abdul Razzak has provided investigators with copies of reports he had passed on to Israeli intelligence from a Syrian chemist working for the security services in connection with a Syrian nuclear programme.
The Syrian expert had been spying for Israel for 13 years, according to the confessions. He was executed in Syria last month, said Al-Shuruk, which did not give sources for its report.
On Sept. 6, 2007, Israel launched an air raid on northern Syria that destroyed an alleged secret nuclear reactor.
The Egyptian trader is to be tried in Egypt's High Security Court on charges of spying for Israel and recruiting agents to report on telecoms secrets in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria, a judicial source said on Monday.
Arrest warrants have been issued for his two Israeli accomplices, the source said, without giving a trial date.

Abdul Razzak is accused of supplying Mossad between 2007 and 2010 with the names of potential recruits employed in the telecommunications sectors in Egypt, Lebanon and Syria. According to a court statement, Abdul Razzak's first contact with Mossad was in 2007, when he received an email while looking for work in China. The same year he met the Israeli agents in Thailand, where the Egyptian was asked to set up an import-export business back home as a cover for his real work with Mossad.
Abdul Razzak also set up a website that offered telecommunications jobs in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, with the aim of looking for more potential recruits, the statement said. In Lebanon, more than 100 people have been arrested on suspicion of spying for Israel since April 2009, including telecoms employees, members of the security forces and active duty troops. (AFP).

New evidence that the Mossad had a hand in the killing of German politician Uwe Barschel in 1987

Uwe Barschel and family in 1987, the year of his death. (DPA)

I still remember this mysterious news item that we, journalists at the foreign desk of the newspaper De Volkskrant got on our desk on 11 October 1987: Uwe Barschel, former prime minister of the German Land Schleswig Holstein, had been found dead, fully clothed in a bath in a room of the luxurious hotel Beau Rivage in Geneva, Switzerland. Was it suicide? Murder? Had he been helped to commit euthanasia for some reason or other? Were there circumstances connected to his health that had been kept from the public? The rather bizar circumstances, the fact that 43-year old Christian Democrat, who till that time had been extremely succesful, had that very same year been forced to quitt office after he had been accused of misconduct during the elections, made that there were wild speculations. His family was convinced that he had been murdered after having contacted and lured to Geneve by a mysterious person, who had promised to give him material that could prove his innocence in the scandal. The German prosecution also took this line after some hesitation. However, in spite of  investigations that lasted till 1998, the  case was never solved.

But now the German Sunday newspaper 'Welt am Sonntag' thinks it has unearthed new evidence. In a long article 'Spur nach Israel, Uwe Barschel, der Tote in Zimmer 317' (A Trail towards Israel, Uwe Barschel, the Dead Man in Room 317) it points an accusing finger at the Israeli secret service Mossad. One of the reasons for its accusation is that Victor Ostrovsky, a former Mossad agent who wrote two books about  his time in this service. In one of them, The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad’s Secret Agenda, published in 1994 (and in Gemany published under the title  ''Geheimakte Mossad') he gave a detailed account of how Barschel's life came to an end.
Ostrovsky describes that the man who contacted him, visited him in his room, left Barschel sipping of the Beaujolais he had brought with him, saying that he had to get something. A while after that five man entered the room, who found Barschel duly lying on the floor, the result of a strong barbiturate that was contained in the wine. The five put him on the bed, fed him, with the help of an oiled rubber tube, a deadly drug and after that a suppository that contained another barbiturate that would enhance the working of this drug. The next thing they did was putting him in the bath tub, which before hand had been filled with ice water.

Ostrovsky's description of what happened was not new. And there was no proof. But now, Welt am Sonntag claims, they have some corroborating evidence. Hans Brandenberger, the Swiss toxicologist who was involved the case from the beginning, has never let the case drop from his mind. The now 89 year old is specalist in the changes that the human metabolism causes in chemical sunstances it absorbs, says the paper (aren't all toxicologists?). Anyhow, Brandenberger discovered already in 1994 that the deadly substance cyclobarbital, that was found in Barzel's  stomac, had been administered relatively late, as most of it was still found in its original composition in the stomac and rather little in an altered form in blood and urine, while both blood and urine contained enough quantities of the other barbiturates to make it sure beyond doubt that he was already unconscious at the time he took the cyclobarbital . It was one of the main reasons that the prosecution continued its murder investigation., Welt am Sonntage says.
Rather recently, however, Brandenberger also found the answer to the questeion that had been plagueing him all along, namely, why the strong working barbiturate Noludar, that also was found in Barschel body, was not present in his stomac and only in its non-altered from in his urine. The answer,  Brandenberger, sayd, is that it must have been administerd to him through the rectum, and even after the cyclobarbital. The people who did it probably wanted to exclude the possiblity that Barschel could be found before he died, and would survive after his stomac was pumped out, he said.
Brandenberger's findings led him to the conclusion that not only it was 100% sure it had been murder, but also it ,must have been the work of a professional team, because of the complexity of administering supositories or deadly doses to the stomac of someone who is already unconscious. Which meant that in an unexspected way Brandenberg is corroborating Ostrovsky's story - unexspectedly mainly because Bandenberger claims that when  he was doing his research, he was unaware of what the ex-agent had written.

About the reasons why Israel might have liked to kill Barschel Welt am Sonntag is less clear. The paper offers various possible explanations, one of them being that Schleswig Holstein played a role as a kind of stepping stone in the shipping of  miliatry hardware by Israel to Iran, that at the time was involved in an ugly  war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Also it hints at American involvement and it tells us that there is evidence that Robert Gates, at the time working with the CIA, lateron US-Defence minister, was in Geneva at the time of the murder. Gates would have been there in relation to the American involvement in these shipments, in the framework of the Iran-contra scandal, the scandal by which de US clandstinely delivered hardware to Iran in order gto free hostages that had been taken by Hezbollah proxies in Lebanon, and used the cash that it received in return to pay Nicarauan contra-rebels which fought against the Sandinistas.
Although it is true that Israel and the USA were both involved in delivering arms to Iran at that time, it sounds somewhat illogical that disclosures Barschel might have been willing to make would have been a reason to kill him. The Iran-contra scandal (and the Israeli involvement) had been brought to light exactly one year earlier by the then Iranian president Rafsanjani. In a speech he disclosed at that time that Robert McFarlane, the head of the American Security Council, had paid a secret visit to Iran with one of these arms shipments and - among other things - brougfht with him presents like a bible with the signature of Ronald Reagan. Subsequently also the Israeli angle became public knowledge. To kill Barschel in order to silence him if he was to disclose an Schleswig-Holsteinian aspect to these shipments, does only make sense if it would have had to do with aspects of the case that hitherto never have been made public. Welt am Sonntag does not provide new clues  in this respect. Which means that, although we may be pretty sure by now that Barschel indeed was killed by a professional secet service, most probably the Mossad, we still have to wait for the next disclosure to be able to know why they did it.. 

Ireland expels Israeli diplomat over killing Hamas-official in Dubai

The Irish Republic is to expel an Israeli diplomat over the use of fake passports in the killing of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mahboub in January in Dubai. Forged British, French, Australian, and German passports were also used in the Dubai operation.The UK and Australia have already expelled Israeli nationals over the forgeries.

Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said an investigation had proved that eight Irish passports used in the operation were forgeries. Mr Martin said in a statement that Israel had been "requested to withdraw a designated member of staff of its embassy" and that he expected the request would "be quickly acceded to. The misuse of Irish passports by a state with which Ireland enjoys friendly, if sometimes frank, bilateral relations is clearly unacceptable and requires a firm response," he said. In Jerusalem, foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the Israeli government regretted the Irish decision, which he said was "not in line with the importance of our relationship with the Irish government".
Mr Martin said the Irish had co-operated closely with British and Australian authorities in their investigation of the killing. He cited "the inescapable conclusion that an Israeli government agency was responsible for the misuse and, most likely, the manufacture of the forged Irish passports associated with the murder of Mr Mabhouh". Irish authorities had asked for Israeli help in their investigation, he said, but such efforts had "yielded no response and no denial of Israeli involvement".
Six of the eight fake passports used the numbers of existing Irish passport holders, while the other two contained invented numbers conforming to the Irish format, the foreign ministry said.Mr Martin said those whose passport numbers had been used had been issued with new passports and that he was confident this would allow them "to travel free from any suspicion".

Last week it emerged that authorities in Poland arrested a suspected Israeli agent in connection with Mr Mabhouh's death.Germany is seeking his extradition over a forged German passport used by one of the killers.

Mossad agent arrested in Poland

 Polish authorities have arrested a suspected Israeli intelligence agent thought to have played a role in the Dubai assassination of a senior Hamas official, German prosecutors said Saturday.
The move apparently came at the request of Germany, which believes Mossad falsified one of its passports to enter the United Arab Emirates in advance of the alleged assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud Al-Mabhoul in January.
"He was arrested in Warsaw and is suspected of being involved in illegally obtaining a [German] passport," Agence France-Presse quoted a spokesman for German federal prosecution as saying. "It's now up to the Poles to decide if they are going to hand him over to Germany," the spokesman said.
The announcement confirmed a report to be published Monday in the Berlin-based daily Der Spiegel that the Israeli suspect, Uri Brodsky, was arrested in early June upon arrival at Warsaw's airport on suspicions that he helped a member of the hit squad get a German passport in the summer of 2009.

Britain expels Israeli diplomat over Mabhouh killing in Dubai

The British Foreign Office on Tuesday decided to expel an Israeli diplomat over the use of forged British passports used by the killers of Hamas member Mahmoud Mabhouh in Dubai in January. The diplomat in question is believed to be the Mossad station manager in London. Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor was summoned to the Foreign Office on Monday and told of the decision.
The Foreign Offfice also took the unusal step to issue a travel advisory to citizens traveling to Israel and the Palestinian territories in which it warned not to hand over passports to third parties. Citing 'circumstantial evidence of Israeli involvement in the fraudulent use of British passports,' the Foreign Office warned on its Web site of the 'possibility that your passport details could be captured for improper uses while your passport is out of your control.' The risk applies in particular to passports without biometric security features, the warning on the Web site said.'We recommend that you only hand your passport over to third parties including Israeli officials when absolutely necessary.'
 Foreign secretary David Miliband (picture) said there were 'compelling reasons' to believe Israel was responsible for the forgeries. He called the misuse of British passports 'intolerable.'  Israel's ambassador to London, Ron Prosor, said he was 'disappointed', but Israel confirmed there would be no tit-for-tat diplomatic expulsion.Mr Prosor said: 'The relationship between Israel and the UK is of mutual importance, hence we are disappointed by the... decision.'
 The foreign secretary said officers from Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) had investigated the matter of the passports. It had concluded the passports used were copied from genuine British passports when handed over for inspection to individuals linked to Israel, either in Israel or in other countries, he said.
'Given that this was a very sophisticated operation, in which high-quality forgeries were made, the government judges it is highly likely that the forgeries were made by a state intelligence service,' he said.'We have concluded that there are compelling reasons to believe Israel was responsible for the misuse of the British passports.'The incident 'represents a profound disregard for the sovereignty of the United Kingdom' he said.
He added that the fact that Israel was a friend added 'insult to injury'.
Expelling a diplomat is a very severe measure in diplomatic terms. It means that Britain is taking the matter very seriously. Miliband on Monday also handed a letter to the Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman in Brussels, in which he demanded assurances from Israel that it in the future will refrain from using this kind of methods.
  At least 12 forged Bristish passport were used in the killing of Hamas-leader Mabhouh together with forgeries of Australian, French and German passports. All in all Dubai singled out 27 idiviuals who had taken part in the murder of Mbhouh. Their identities had been stolen from Israeli's who had immigrated from the countries in question.

Update: The ultra rightist member of Knesset Aryeh Eldad (National Union) gave this comment on the British measure to Sky News: 'I think [the] British are behaving hypocritically and I don't want to offend dogs on this issue, since some dogs are utterly loyal, Who are they to judge us on the war on terror?' He added that Israel's 'natural reaction should be to expel one of the senior diplomats in the British Embassy, maybe the military attache or someone on his level.'
Eldad's party colleague, MK Michael Ben-Ari, also compared the British to dogs and what h said was no less looney. 'The British may be dogs, but they are not loyal to us, but rather to an anti-Semitic system, and Israeli diplomacy partially plays into their hands. This is anti-Semitism disguised as anti-Zionism.'
 

Dubai identifies more fraudulent passports in killing

DUBAI (Reuters) - The United Arab Emirates has identified four more suspects who carried fraudulent British and Irish passports in the Dubai killing of a Hamas commander, a source familiar with the investigation said on Tuesday.

The use of passports from European Union countries by the killers of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh has drawn censure from the bloc. Dubai has accused Israel of being behind the assassination, but the Israeli foreign minister has said there was no proof his country carried out the killing.
"The UAE has identified two British suspects holding British travel documents and as part of the ongoing investigation has shared the information with the British government," the source in the UAE told Reuters.
Two more suspects in the killing of Mabhouh in a hotel in January were identified as holding Irish passports, the source added.The Dubai authorities last week released the identities of 11 people who traveled on forged British, Irish, French and German passports to kill Mabhouh, and said that two Palestinians suspected of providing logistical support were in custody.The new information brings the tally of fake British passports used to eight and Irish identities used to five.

Murder in pictures and on tape

 Hamas has blamed Israel for the murder in a Dubai hotel room last month of its offical Mahmud al-Mabhouh and the emirate's police force has refused to rule out the possibility that the 11 suspects wanted by investigators were working for Mossad.
Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli foreign minister, told Army Radio on Wednesday: "There is no reason to think that it was the Israeli Mossad, and not some other intelligence service or country up to some mischief.However, he also said that Israel has a "policy of ambiguity" on intelligence matters.

It's somewhat incredible to see the pictures of these people all over. Great-Britain and Ireland (and possibly France and Germany too) are investigating who falsified passports that belonged to citizens of their respective countries. Britain's prime minister Gordon Brown considers it to be a serious matter and the Israeli ambassador was summoned to give an explanation.
Six Israeli's who immigrated from the United Kingdom and one from the US are implicated,  because their passport numbers and names have been used on these falsified documents. Nobody knows the consequences this will have for them in the future. Austria is trying to find out the origins of a  number of cell phones with Austrian sim cards that were used during the murder operation. A number of secret agents had better stay inside and devote themselves to paperwork from now on, since they are not that secret anymore as their pictures have gone all over the world, and the scans that the Dubai customs took from them will be in many computers.
The actions of the perpetrators of the killing have even been recorded on tape and made available by the police of the UAE. In this way it is visible how the victim, Mabhouh, is followed by people in tennis gear in order to find out which room he is in, how some agents disguised themselves with false wigs or beards,  how Mabhouh is tailed till the moment of his suspected murder, etc. (In order to watch the tape, click here).
  The Mossad certainly did a great great job. If they had hired some sloppy agents from Mubarak's Egypt, of from Lebanon or Iraq, the perfomance woudl have been better, for sure.