Mahmoud al-Mabhouh

Mahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh (محمود عبد الرؤوف المبحوح; 14 February 1960 – 19 January 2010) was the chief of logistics and weapons procurement for Hamas's military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

He is remembered for his assassination in Dubai (widely seen as an operation by Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence agency) and the diplomatic crisis his assassination triggered after Mossad agents allegedly used forged foreign passports to carry out the killing.

As Hamas's logistics officer, Al-Mabhouh oversaw the transfer of advanced weapons from Iran such as anti tank missiles, guided missiles and rockets to Hamas in Gaza for the purpose of targeting Israel.

Al-Mabhouh was born in Jabalia refugee camp, Gaza Strip, on 14 February 1960.

As a young man, he pursued weightlifting.

He quit secondary school, trained as a car mechanic and later became a garage owner.

Al-Mabhouh had 13 siblings, and was a married father of four.

In the 1970s, he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, and in the 1980s, he was reported to have been involved in sabotaging coffee shops where gambling was taking place.

In 1986, the Israeli security forces arrested him for possession of an assault rifle.

It has been reported that after his release, he became involved with Hamas.

He also planned the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers in Gaza in 1989.

In more recent years, al-Mabhouh had played an important role in procuring weapons for the al-Qassam Brigades.

According to Hamas, al-Mabhouh was personally responsible for the abduction and killing of the Israeli soldiers Avi Sasportas and Ilan Sa'adon in 1989.

In May 1989, a failed attempt was made to arrest him for his involvement in the murder of the two Israeli soldiers and he subsequently left the Gaza Strip; his home in Gaza was demolished by Israel in 1989 as retribution for the attack.

He spent most of 2003 in an Egyptian jail.

At the time of his death, al-Mabhouh was wanted by the Israeli, Egyptian and Jordanian governments, and living in Syria.

Just before his killing, al-Mabhouh was alleged to have played a key role in forging secret connections between the Hamas government in Gaza and the Al-Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guard in Iran.

Mabhouh's nephew Ahmad also joined Hamas and became an engineering and sabotage officer in a Hamas unit near Jabaliya.

According to a report in The Palestine Chronicle, al-Mabhouh had survived two assassination attempts; the first was a car bombing; the second took place in Beirut in 2009 and involved the use of radioactive poison which rendered him unconscious for 30 hours.

In 2010, journalists Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv alleged that al-Mabhouh had played a vital role as the middleman in forging secret relationships between Hamas and the Quds Force in Iran.

Al-Mabhouh was killed in the five-star Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on 19 January 2010, having arrived in the country earlier that day from Syria under an alias and using one of several passports.

According to police, al-Mabhouh was drugged, electrocuted and then suffocated with a pillow.

Widespread speculation, which Dubai police allegations support, is that he was killed by Israeli Mossad agents.

Allegations that the agents used fraudulently obtained passports from several countries led to the arrests and expulsions of several Israeli officials and diplomats in several European countries and Australia.

In a video taped two weeks before his death and broadcast on Al Jazeera in early February 2010, al-Mabhouh admitted his involvement in this event, saying he had disguised himself as an Orthodox Jew.

On 19 January 2010, al-Mabhouh was killed in his room in a hotel in Dubai.

He had been followed by at least eleven Mossad agents who were carrying fake or fraudulently obtained passports from various Western countries, seven of which assumed the names of Israeli dual citizens.

Reports indicated that al-Mabhouh was very closely tracked by his killers from Damascus airport to Dubai.

He was travelling without bodyguards, and was en route to Bangkok.

Although it was reported that he carried five passports under different names, Hamas officials in Syria reportedly stated that at this time he was using a passport issued in his own name.

He checked into the Al Bustan Rotana hotel on the afternoon of 19 January.

He left the hotel about an hour after check-in, and there were conflicting reports as to what he did during the few hours before he was killed.

At approximately 8:25 p.m. Al-Mabhouh went back to his room.

He failed to answer a call from his wife a half-hour later.

According to Dubai Police Force, he was dead by 9 p.m. that evening.

On 20 January, the following day, his body was found in his hotel room.

The door was locked from the inside.

al-Mabhouh's body was transported to Damascus for burial.

Hotel CCTV surveillance footage released to the public shows the agents, who had arrived on separate flights, meeting in the hotel.

He was assassinated in an Israeli attack during the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict.