LONDON – The British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Tuesday there are "compelling reasons" to believe Israel is behind the cloned British passports used by the alleged killers of a Hamas official in Dubai. Miliband told MPs: "Given that this was a very sophisticated operation, in which high-quality forgeries were made, the government judges it highly likely that the forgeries were made by a state intelligence service. "Taking this together with other inquiries and the link to Israel established by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), we have concluded there are compelling reasons to believe Israel was responsible for the misuse of the British passports." Miliband also confirmed a member of the Israeli embassy was being expelled from the UK at his request. Mossad, Israel's secret service, has widely been blamed for the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in January. Dubai police investigating the case revealed some members of the suspected hit squad had travelled on British identities. Their passports appeared to have been copied from real documents belonging to at least 12 Britons living in Israel. Hamas said it welcomed the British Government's decision to expel a diplomat and accused Israel of being a "practising terrorist state".
