More on the Dubai Assassination

Those following the mysterious tale of the assassination of the Hamas terrorist leader Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month may be interested in some of the latest developments. According to DEBKAfile:

Dubai's police chief Dhahi Khalfan said Friday, Feb. 26, that DNA and fingerprint evidence of at least one of the 26 team of assassins had been found in the hotel room where Hamas commander Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh was found dead on Jan. 19. The first arrest warrants have now been issued through Interpol.

DEBKAfile's intelligence sources report that the Dubai authorities believe that a persistent stream of "revelations" about the Mabhouh investigation will make Israel and its Mossad intelligence agency slip up and admit responsibility for his death.

According to those sources, it makes no sense for the Dubai police to have found DNA or fingerprints in room 230 of the Al-Bustan Rotana luxury hotel occupied by Mabhouh and in none of the other rooms taken by hit team members. Any fingerprints will not be of much use unless they can be matched with prints of identified persons already on file with the Dubai police, and in any case are probably not genuine.

Our sources disclose that all the suspects arrived in Dubai disguised from head to toe and their fingerprints were most likely faked along with the rest of their appearance. Therefore, the Dubai police's fine collection of video clips and passport photos are of little use to the inquiry.

DEBKAfile sources therefore dismiss the claims by the Dubai police and certain Israeli publications citing "security experts" that the Mossad was caught unawares by the security cameras which tracked the death squad's movements. They missed the fact that the team was not only aware of the cameras but controlled them and used them in support of their mission.

Therefore, when Khalfan comes out with his next round of "revelations," he will most likely produce video depictions of some of the suspects using electronic gadgets to open the door of 230, Mabhouh's hotel room, at 8:24 p.m. Jan. 19, as the victim climbed up from the lobby to his room. The next shot 19 minutes later will show the same suspects leaving room 230, relocking the door and with the same gadget shooting the inside bolt home to concoct the appearance of a locked room mystery.

But the Dubai police are clearly missing the essential 19-minute segment covering the action inside room 230, without which they have no real evidence of a crime. That did not happen by chance.

According to our sources, the death squad kept the cameras running long enough to exhibit their facility to penetrate any secure site in the Middle East, but switched them off when they wanted to conceal the actions they took in pursuance of their mission.

Well, now. I don't know who DEBKAfile's sources are, but if this was not a Mossad operation who else would be trying to send the message that they could strike anywhere in the Middle East?

I also wonder why DEBKAfile thinks there's no real evidence of a crime if the suspects can be seen surreptitiously entering the room before the murder and leaving it afterwards, locking the body inside. That certainly seems like evidence to me.

Anyway, the TimesOnline reports that since the assassination became public young Israelis are applying for jobs with Mossad in droves.

RLC

Over the Cliff

Ramirez offers his perspective on why Republicans don't want to go along with Democrats on health care:

Pretty funny.

RLC

ID vs. TE

One of the sidebar debates in the intelligent design controversy is the clash between IDers and theistic evolutionists. Both agree that the world is intentionally designed but IDers believe that the evidence of this design can be detected in the world whereas TEers don't. TEers argue that natural forces and laws have produced the world as we see it (at least the living world) but that these laws and forces were the product of a Divine mind. Thus, TEers maintain, even though God is the primary cause of the world, we can know this only by faith not by any discovery of science.

According to TE the world appears just as it would were natural forces and laws solely responsible for it. IDers argue that, on the contrary, the world shows immense evidence of an underlying intelligence. The intelligence may not be that of the God of the Bible (though most IDers personally believe it is), but it's an intelligence all the same.

It seems like a small difference to be so exercised over but the theistic evolutionists, at least, are adamant, and sometimes even angry, in their opposition to ID, especially their opposition to treating ID as science.

A good introduction to the difference between the two positions is a debate that took place about a year ago between William Lane Craig and Francisco Ayala who addressed the question: Is Intelligent Design Viable? Craig argued for the affirmative and, as usual, pretty much dominated the event, which is interesting because Craig is a philosopher (not even a philosopher of science) and Ayala is a biologist.

Anyway, if you'd like to hear the audio you can listen to it here. There's also video of Craig's opening presentation here. The comments at the first site are also worth checking.

RLC