LONDON/DUBLIN/DUBAI …quot; British government sources said on Tuesday that the three Irish passport-holders accused of taking part in the assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai last month were most likely Mossad agents carrying false documentation, according to The Daily Telegraph. The newspaper report came one day after Dubai police chief Lt. Gen. Dhahi Khalfan Tamim announced that senior Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was murdered by an 11-member hit squad of mercenaries carrying European passports. In Dublin, Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs said three alleged Irish citizens that Dubai authorities claim helped to assassinate a Hamas official do not exist. The government said the trio of alleged Irish passport-holders identified Monday in Dubai as Gail Folliard, Evan Dennings and Kevin Daveron do not appear in Ireland's records of legitimate passport-holders. "We are unable to identify any of those three individuals as being genuine Irish citizens. Ireland has issued no passports in those names," the department said in a statement. The government said the Irish passport numbers publicised by Dubai authorities also are counterfeits, because they have the wrong number of digits and contain no letters. Dubai police appealed for an international manhunt yesterday after releasing names and photos of an alleged 11-member hit squad accused of stalking and killing a Hamas commander last month in a plot that mixed cold precision with spy caper disguises such as fake beards and wigs. Dubai authorities said they would seek assistance from the global police coordination agency Interpol and press individual nations to hunt down the suspects in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, whose body was found January 20 in his luxury hotel room. Dubai's attorney general, Essam al-Hemaydan, said international arrest warrants had been issued for those accused of links to the slaying. Police said the 10 men and one woman travelled to Dubai with European passports and killed al-Mabhouh less than 24 hours after their arrival. Tamim did not directly implicate Israel at a news conference on Monday to announce new details about al-Mabhouh's death. But he noted the possibility that "leaders of certain countries gave orders to their intelligence agents to kill" al-Mabhouh. At least two Palestinians have been taken into custody in Dubai for alleged links to the slaying, said Adnan Damiri the police spokesman in the West Bank citing sources familiar with the investigation. Damiri said the Palestinian suspects were Hamas operatives. But Hamas claimed the suspects were linked to the rival Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as part of alleged clandestine links with Israeli intelligence. Meanwhile, there was no comment from Dubai-based diplomats from the countries linked to passports carried by the alleged assassin cell: six with British, three Irish and one each from France and Germany. Dubai police claimed that four members of the alleged cell …quot; three men identified as British and one Irish …quot; carried out the killing. Five others, including the woman, were used as spotters and in other planning roles, police said. The mastermind was a man identified as French.
