10 ms·

Alleged Assassins Caught on Dubai Surveillance Tape

82 points by phsr 17y ago

rudyfink 17y ago
The amount of effort that would need to go into creating that video and the facts that the article asserts is just impressive: -figuring out the group of people -how everyone entered the country -all of their phone communication while they were in the country, including finding out their numbers -how they spent money inside the country -their motions inside the country -where they went after they left the country
- jules 17y ago
  They probably got it from the secret service? Those likely have most of this information in a database and can get it with the the press of a button.
  - gridspy 17y ago
    That would be a pretty impressive database.
- anamax 17y ago
  It's not that impressive if the tapers knew where the suspects were going before hand.
- pieceofpeace 17y ago
  The first lead probably came from the hotel cams. When al-Mabhouh arrives at his hotel around 3 p.m. on the 19th, the footage captures two of the suspects, dressed in tennis gear, getting into the same elevator with him to follow him to his hotel room. The two suspects later checked into the room across the hall from him
- radu_floricica 17y ago
  Why do you find it impressive? I have a distinct feeling they know much more then this... I'd be surprised if they didn't have by now a file of at least half of them. What we've seen is simply competent police work, nothing more. The police are trained, paid and well funded to do exactly this kind of thing... I'm really not surprised to find it worked for once. I am surprised though to see it public. In the good ol' days this would have been handled much more discreetly.
electromagnetic 17y ago
Of the two methods currently being used to deal with the militant Islamic fanatics, the 'War On Terror' has only really achieved in causing mass terror amongst our own people and imprison hundreds of innocent people because our government's criteria for 'wrong place and wrong time' were basically Afghanistan and post-invasion. However the allegedly Israeli approach causes virtually no terror to our own people (in fact it appears to instill the exact opposite of terror), it has no collateral damage and only a minor amount of innocents get caught in the cross hairs. What I'm wondering is if the 'Israeli' approach to militant Islamiscs the better approach? IE is it getting the job done at a better tax-payer cost and a better ethical cost (less young soldiers dead, less innocents wrongly imprisoned and less collateral damage vs. a wrong target).
- barrkel 17y ago
  The collateral damage includes political fallout, damage to bilateral relations with friendly countries, and an increase in the risk of being treated as a pariah.
  - pyre 17y ago
    Are you talking about the collateral damage of (e.g.) invading Iraq or Afghanistan? Or are you talking about the collateral damage of using hit squads to take out terrorist leaders?
    - mshafrir 17y ago
      The collateral damage of sanctioned assassinations.
      - ghfdrvtsyup 17y ago
        exactly. Is it worse in the eyes of the world to say that you're 'fighting a war on terror' and invade a country or secretly kill high-ranking enemy officials for years before finally getting caught? The second is more expedient, but if you kill the wrong person at the wrong time, you can probably cause yourself a lot more harm than good. Imagine if the US killed Saddam Hussein by poisoning his breakfast!
utku_karatas2 17y ago
Flagged. What's this Mossad PR stunt doing on HN?
- tonystubblebine 17y ago
  I'm hoping for someone to discuss the implications as they relate to technology, PR, security, and privacy. What technology is necessary to gather that much video so quickly? Is that video feeding into a central hub? This is Dubai, a relatively tiny country. Did they build this technology themselves or did they license it. PR. What's to gain from releasing this? It's fascinating but long. It's definitely not put together as a soundbite, in fact it has no sound. What are the security implications of releasing this information? Will it make future assassins think twice? What about the privacy implications? If you were incorrectly identified as a lookout what would you do to clear your name? The story includes some Israelis who share names with the assassination team who are freaked out right now.
  - yannis 17y ago
    What technology is necessary to gather that much video so quickly? Is that video feeding into a central hub? This is Dubai, a relatively tiny country. Did they build this technology themselves or did they license it. The technology is CCTV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television. It is imported from all over the place and is probably not feeding into a central hub. In most countries UAE included it is found in all hotels, airports and Shopping Centers. The assassins for sure knew about it but because of their modus operandi did not worry about it. If you notice the end of the video says the hotel staff opened the room 17 hours later and that the latch was locked from the inside. They made the murder appear as a heart attack (other reports at the time) reported it as electrocution - probably killed him by inducing a heart attack via electrocution. The team scattered to different places and all the names and nationalities mentioned are probably false. They also probably had multiple passports and on leaving Dubai appeared in another country with a different name.
    - johnyzee 17y ago
jonshea 17y ago
I love that there was a guy whose whole job was to show up at the hotel, pay for the room across the hall from the target, hand off the key, and then immediately leave the country.
aquarin 17y ago
This reminds me about the movie "Munich".
farrel 17y ago
The Mossad Kidon (it's assassination branch) is rumoured to only have about 50 or so operatives. Which means they potentially compromised almost 20% of their resources to take out this one target.
- endtime 17y ago
  This was almost certainly not Mossad, for precisely that reason. Mossad is not known for sloppy work, and this was nothing if not sloppy. The passports were bad fakes; several of them were duplicates of real innocent Israeli lookalikes; 11 people to kill one guy with no security detail, all of them with their faces on camera? Yeah, pretty sure this wasn't Mossad.
tome 17y ago
They went to a lot of trouble to make the death look like a heart attack, even somehow having the door locked from the inside as they left. But it seems like it was immediately obvious to the police that this was a murder, so what was the point of going to all that trouble?
- alextp 17y ago
  I'd say just to save time and face. If he was found with a bullet through his head or something like that it is not unreasonable that all airports and roads would be closed for a while, but if it looked just like a heart attack the murderers have a bit of extra time to leave the country.

82 points by phsr 17y ago

The amount of effort that would need to go into creating that video and the facts that the article asserts is just impressive: -figuring out the group of people -how everyone entered the country -all of their phone communication while they were in the country, including finding out their numbers -how they spent money inside the country -their motions inside the country -where they went after they left the country

jules 17y ago
They probably got it from the secret service? Those likely have most of this information in a database and can get it with the the press of a button.
- gridspy 17y ago
  That would be a pretty impressive database.
anamax 17y ago
It's not that impressive if the tapers knew where the suspects were going before hand.
pieceofpeace 17y ago
The first lead probably came from the hotel cams. When al-Mabhouh arrives at his hotel around 3 p.m. on the 19th, the footage captures two of the suspects, dressed in tennis gear, getting into the same elevator with him to follow him to his hotel room. The two suspects later checked into the room across the hall from him
radu_floricica 17y ago
Why do you find it impressive? I have a distinct feeling they know much more then this... I'd be surprised if they didn't have by now a file of at least half of them. What we've seen is simply competent police work, nothing more. The police are trained, paid and well funded to do exactly this kind of thing... I'm really not surprised to find it worked for once. I am surprised though to see it public. In the good ol' days this would have been handled much more discreetly.

electromagnetic 17y ago

Of the two methods currently being used to deal with the militant Islamic fanatics, the 'War On Terror' has only really achieved in causing mass terror amongst our own people and imprison hundreds of innocent people because our government's criteria for 'wrong place and wrong time' were basically Afghanistan and post-invasion. However the allegedly Israeli approach causes virtually no terror to our own people (in fact it appears to instill the exact opposite of terror), it has no collateral damage and only a minor amount of innocents get caught in the cross hairs. What I'm wondering is if the 'Israeli' approach to militant Islamiscs the better approach? IE is it getting the job done at a better tax-payer cost and a better ethical cost (less young soldiers dead, less innocents wrongly imprisoned and less collateral damage vs. a wrong target).

barrkel 17y ago
The collateral damage includes political fallout, damage to bilateral relations with friendly countries, and an increase in the risk of being treated as a pariah.
- pyre 17y ago
  Are you talking about the collateral damage of (e.g.) invading Iraq or Afghanistan? Or are you talking about the collateral damage of using hit squads to take out terrorist leaders?
  - mshafrir 17y ago
    The collateral damage of sanctioned assassinations.
    - ghfdrvtsyup 17y ago
      exactly. Is it worse in the eyes of the world to say that you're 'fighting a war on terror' and invade a country or secretly kill high-ranking enemy officials for years before finally getting caught? The second is more expedient, but if you kill the wrong person at the wrong time, you can probably cause yourself a lot more harm than good. Imagine if the US killed Saddam Hussein by poisoning his breakfast!

utku_karatas2 17y ago

Flagged. What's this Mossad PR stunt doing on HN?

tonystubblebine 17y ago
I'm hoping for someone to discuss the implications as they relate to technology, PR, security, and privacy. What technology is necessary to gather that much video so quickly? Is that video feeding into a central hub? This is Dubai, a relatively tiny country. Did they build this technology themselves or did they license it. PR. What's to gain from releasing this? It's fascinating but long. It's definitely not put together as a soundbite, in fact it has no sound. What are the security implications of releasing this information? Will it make future assassins think twice? What about the privacy implications? If you were incorrectly identified as a lookout what would you do to clear your name? The story includes some Israelis who share names with the assassination team who are freaked out right now.
- yannis 17y ago
  What technology is necessary to gather that much video so quickly? Is that video feeding into a central hub? This is Dubai, a relatively tiny country. Did they build this technology themselves or did they license it. The technology is CCTV http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Closed-circuit_television. It is imported from all over the place and is probably not feeding into a central hub. In most countries UAE included it is found in all hotels, airports and Shopping Centers. The assassins for sure knew about it but because of their modus operandi did not worry about it. If you notice the end of the video says the hotel staff opened the room 17 hours later and that the latch was locked from the inside. They made the murder appear as a heart attack (other reports at the time) reported it as electrocution - probably killed him by inducing a heart attack via electrocution. The team scattered to different places and all the names and nationalities mentioned are probably false. They also probably had multiple passports and on leaving Dubai appeared in another country with a different name.
  - johnyzee 17y ago

jonshea 17y ago

I love that there was a guy whose whole job was to show up at the hotel, pay for the room across the hall from the target, hand off the key, and then immediately leave the country.

aquarin 17y ago

This reminds me about the movie "Munich".

farrel 17y ago

The Mossad Kidon (it's assassination branch) is rumoured to only have about 50 or so operatives. Which means they potentially compromised almost 20% of their resources to take out this one target.

endtime 17y ago
This was almost certainly not Mossad, for precisely that reason. Mossad is not known for sloppy work, and this was nothing if not sloppy. The passports were bad fakes; several of them were duplicates of real innocent Israeli lookalikes; 11 people to kill one guy with no security detail, all of them with their faces on camera? Yeah, pretty sure this wasn't Mossad.

tome 17y ago

They went to a lot of trouble to make the death look like a heart attack, even somehow having the door locked from the inside as they left. But it seems like it was immediately obvious to the police that this was a murder, so what was the point of going to all that trouble?

alextp 17y ago
I'd say just to save time and face. If he was found with a bullet through his head or something like that it is not unreasonable that all airports and roads would be closed for a while, but if it looked just like a heart attack the murderers have a bit of extra time to leave the country.