At last, a team of detectives from Britain's Serious Organised Crimes Agency is in Israel with the intent of interviewing British-Israeli dual nationals whose passports were cloned by Mahmoud Al Mabhouh's assassins.
Reports in the international media widely assume that the 12 Britons named unwittingly handed over their British passports to Israeli airport immigration authorities. The general belief is that the dual-nationals concerned are innocent victims of those behind the plot to kill the Hamas commander. They may well be. However, given certain anomalies, I can only trust that their "interviews" will be more than a softly-softly chat over tea and cucumber sandwiches.
Firstly, Philip Carr whose name appears on the second list of six British dual-nationals issued by Dubai Police has confirmed a point I mentioned in last week's column; that Israeli citizens must enter and depart Israel on their Israeli passports. "I don't think I ever presented the passport to anyone in Israel because I left and came back to Israel on my Israeli passport in accordance with Israeli law," Carr said. In that case, Carr would have certainly remembered being asked by Israeli immigration to hand over his British travel documents. Alternatively, Carr could be attempting to get Israeli immigration off the hook. Carr says the whole matter is "more interesting than annoying".
The main mystery is: how did an intelligence agency gain sight of Carr's passport along with all the others? If they had been stolen then that would have been reported. There is the possibility that they could have been intercepted by Israeli postal authorities or had been requested by Israeli government agencies for whatever purpose. These are questions that are, no doubt, being asked by British police.
Secondly, the British police should profile the dual-nationals and try to discover a pattern. What is it that they have in common, if anything?
Mysterious
About those named on the second list little is known. Most have either gone to ground or have refused newspaper interviews. An Israeli news site, Ynet, reports that one female Israeli resident named denies holding a foreign passport, while within hours of the new list's publication "the names of ‘suspects' Philip Carr and Daniel Marc Schnur ‘magically' disappeared from the 144 phone directory website".
There is, however, a smattering of information about the six whose names were initially revealed. At least three live and work on kibbutzim. These are:
Paul John Keeley, a convert to Judaism who has lived on Kibbutz Nahsholim for 15 years and says he hasn't left Israel since 2008 when he visited Turkey on a trip organised by his kibbutz.
Michael Lawrence Barney, who immigrated to Israel in the 1970s to work on the kibbutz of Beit HaEmek; he was followed by his brother during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War. A kibbutz spokesperson has revealed that in the early days the kibbutz was home to people connected with security, who used to regularly disappear for a week or more. Today, young Beit HaEmek kibbutzniks voluntarily add a year to their mandatory national service. The name of Barney's daughter Gabriella, who lives on the same kibbutz, appears on the second list.
James Leonard Clarke moved to Israel several years ago when he worked for the Israeli military as a bomb disposal expert. He is now a resident of a kibbutz called Givat HaShlosha, that once hid weapons caches for the Haganah, a Jewish terrorist network which became the core of the Israeli army after 1948.
The others originally named are:
Stephen Daniel Hodes, who moved to Israel a decade ago followed by his parents. Today he works as a physiotherapist for the Hadassah Hospital in Occupied Jerusalem that was founded by the Women's Zionist Organisation of America.
Melvyn Adam Mildiner, who immigrated to Israel on September 11, 2001, and who says he feels more at home there than anywhere else.
Jonathan Lewis Graham, who immigrated to Israel with his parents and family three years ago; all said to be "devoutly religious and community-minded".
The message I'm getting is that all six are Zionist and/or religious ideologues. Moreover, a named Australian dual-national, Joshua Daniel Bruce, is in Israel to study Judaism while Michael Bodenheimer, whose name appears on a forged German passport, lives in the ultra-orthodox city of Bnei Brak and studies in a yeshiva (Jewish seminary). None of them, as far as I can divine, has lashed out at the Israeli government or at the Mossad for placing them in peril. ‘Coincidentally', none of the 12 Britons named was outside Israel at the time of the hit.
Most ordinary young Israelis, today, are not ideologues, so it may be that these people were specifically chosen for their patriotic fervour. It's not, therefore, inconceivable that they willingly handed over their passports to Mossad agents and agreed not to travel during a specified period. That's for British investigators to find out. I only hope that they are backed by enough political will to launch a vigorous probe befitting the seriousness of this crime.
Concurrently, the US should investigate Payoneer, the New-York based company that distributed credit cards to several of the assassins. Payoneer's founder and CEO Yuval Tal is a former member of Israel's Special Forces, while the company has a research and development centre in Tel Aviv. But don't hold your breath!
Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com. Some of the comments may be considered for publication.
