Europe and Australia more worried about passport fraud than Mossad murderers

While the much-publicised hunt continues into the Dubai fake passports affair, no European country has yet launched a manhunt for the killers of the Hamas man slain in the Gulf state despite an Interpol investigation into the crime. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was murdered in Dubai on 19 January by Mossad operatives who then fled across Europe. The men are believed to have flown to Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany and the Netherlands but none of the authorities of these countries have launched investigations. AP say this is because the hit was carried out by a friendly country and arresting Israeli agents or even digging up evidence that Israel was involved could be politically costly. "I would guess that it's in the political interest of certain countries not to get proactive in this case," said Victor Mauer, deputy director of the Centre for Security Studies at Zurich's Federal Institute of Technology.

The countries also say they have yet to receive a request of help from Dubai about the case. The murdered man Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was a senior Hamas commander. He was also one of the founders of the Qassam brigades which were responsible for the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, and in the subsequent heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip following Israel’s incursion in December 2008. Al-Mabhouh was born in Gaza in 1960 and has been known to Israeli authorities since as far back as 1989 when he was involved in the abduction and murder of two IDF members. He has been the target of two previous assassination attempts: a car bombing and a poisoning. The poisoning took place in Beirut just six months ago and rendered him unconscious for 30 hours.

In recent years al-Mabhouh was a key negotiator between Hamas and Iran. On 19 January he flew from Syria to Dubai stopping off there on his way to Bangkok. He arrived in the early afternoon without bodyguards and booked into the Al Bustan Rotana hotel using a false identity. He left the hotel an hour later and returned around 8.25pm that evening. It was likely he was being tailed during his absence. His wife rang a half hour later but there was no answer. Israeli news agency Inyan Merkazi reported a four-member squad of Shin Bet and Mossad agents interrogated al-Mabhouh before executing him. Dubai Police say he was dead by 9pm. Hotel footage show suspects following him to his room in the afternoon before checking into the room opposite. Around 8pm they gained entry to his room and waited for his return.

Al-Mahmoud’s body was found the following morning and taken for a police examination. Burns from a stun gun were found under his ear, in his groin and on his chest. Pathologists discovered his nose bled before death. They found blood on a pillow they believe was placed over his nose and mouth to suffocate him. Results from a preliminary forensic report by the Dubai police found that al-Mabhouh was first paralysed via electric shock to his ears, legs, heart and genitals and then suffocated. Dubai police identified 11 people they suspected of involvement in the murder. Five of them carried out the crime while the remaining six served as lookouts. Another four were later added to the list and they all travelled on fake Western passports, six UK, five Irish, three Australian, one French and one German. The fact that many of the passports share names with people living in Israel reinforced widespread suspicion about Mossad involvement.

Reaction in the west to al-Mahmoud’s killing was initially muted. The subtext was here was a known terrorist who was simply getting his just desserts. But reaction quickly changed once it became apparent that Israeli agents used western passports in the hit. Foreign ministers of all the countries involved complained to Israel about the identity theft involved. The EU called the nature of the killing “profoundly disturbing”. Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith was also distinctly uneasy in criticising Israel but said it would not be considered the "act of a friend.”

UK Police are now in Israel investigating the passport theft. There they will interview six British-Israeli nationals whose identities were stolen by the suspected killers. Officers say they are being viewed as potential witnesses to a crime, which is the fraudulent use of a passport, and will not be questioned or interviewed as suspects. British authorities say they believe the Israeli secret service Mossad was involved which Israel has refused to confirm or deny.

In a penetrating article in New Matilda last week, Mark Steven skewered western reaction to the crime. Steven said the West’s response to the assassination was simply the result of their principal and shared interest in the expropriation of national identities rather than a horror of al-Mahmoud’s death.” While assassination is condemnable, it seems the requisition of a European or an Australian identity is utterly unforgivable,” he wrote. Stevens asked the question: “While life that coheres behind names printed on European passports is to be valued highly, what is the worth of life that only exists under collective labels, such as ‘Israel’ or ‘Palestine’?”

Dubai renames world’s tallest building to Burj Khalifa

On the day of its official opening, the world’s new tallest building the Burj Dubai has been renamed to Burj Khalifa. The new name honours the president of the UAE and the ruler of neighbouring emirate Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al Nahyan ("Burj" means tower in Arabic). The renaming shows that despite Dubai’s glittering exterior, it is now totally reliant on the oil wealth of Abu Dhabi to see it survive the financial crisis. Sheik Khalifa’s multi-billion-dollar bailout in November helped Dubai's biggest developer avoid a potentially disastrous debt default.

The official height of the astonishingly tall building was a closely guarded secret until yesterday when it was formally announced as 828m (2,716 feet). The building’s owner Emaar Properties flashed the announcement onto a giant screen during a spectacular fireworks and water show. 400,000 people watched on as fireworks cascaded from the tower's spire to the base and lasers blazed out from all levels. It was here the name change was also announced. The Burj Khalifa is a mixed use development which will house residential apartments, offices, and an Armani hotel. The tower’s first tenants will be moving in next month.

Burj Khalifa is the tallest building in the world according to the three main criteria of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH). The CTBUH ranks the world’s tallest buildings based on ‘Height to Architectural Top,’ ‘Height to Highest Occupied Floor’ and ‘Height to Tip’. Burj Khalifa is 320 metres taller than the 508m Taipei 101, which had held the record for the world’s tallest building measured to the architectural top since 2004. The Burj is also the world's tallest structure surpassing the 630m KVLY-TV mast in North Dakota, USA. The tower also beats the 31-year-old record of Toronto’s CN Tower, which had been the world’s tallest free-standing structure on land since 1976 standing at 553m.

The vital statistics for the new building are hugely impressive. It took 22 million man hours to build. It has 200 stories using the world’s fastest lifts which travel at 18 metres a second (64 kph). It uses 330,000 cubic metres of concrete, 39,000 metric tonnes of steel reinforcing bar and 142,000 square metres of glass in 26,000 windows. An Australian company Cox Gomyl has won the contract to clean them all. Dale Harding from Cox Gomyl has no doubt about the scale of the project his company is taking on "It's an amazing building, people focus on the height of the building,” he said. “But really the breadth and width of the building is just huge when you're standing next to it."

But Blair Kamin in the Chicago Tribune wasn’t so excited by the new building; he was more upset by the impacts of the sudden name change. He says the t-shirts and caps for sale in the skyscraper's observatory and gift shop emblazoned with Burj Dubai are now outmoded on the first day that the observatory is opening to the public. The district in which the skyscraper is located is called "Downtown Burj Dubai” and is identified as such on road signs and maps. He also says the tower's owners just spent $2 million on Burj Dubai uniforms for security and hotel personnel. “How much will it cost to change the uniforms?” he asked “Or might it be easier to put patches on the uniforms that cover up "Burj Dubai" and say "Burj Khalifa" instead?”

Kamin says Dubai's leaders must have known that problems like this were coming when they agreed to the name change to the Abu Dhabi leader who bailed them out of their debt crisis. He said they were so desperate that they had no choice. This may be true. But it may also be true that Dubai’s rulers are truly grateful for Abu Dhabi’s intervention. Without Khalifa’s billions, Dubai would have been in such strife, that yesterday’s opening would have resembled a funeral rather than a celebration. The opening of the Burj Khalifa will certainly be a major psychological boost to the troubled emirate. Changing t-shirts, uniforms and street signs is a small price to pay for survival.

Dubai teetering on the brink of financial collapse

Dubai markets have collapsed on the first day of local trading since the collapse of the state-owned Dubai World conglomerate. There was no trading last week in Dubai because of the Eid al-Adha festival and analysts had predicting carnage when the exchange opened for the first time since the crisis broke. They have not been proven wrong. According to Al Jazeera's Dan Nolan the financial indicators are “all flashing red” and the main bourse dropped 5.6 per cent instantly. Major securities in the construction and banking sectors fell to almost the 10 per cent maximum allowed. And the Nakheel property developer at the centre of Dubai World’s problems took its bonds off the Dubai and Nasdaq stock exchanges. (photo credit: Joi)

The meltdown followed the reaction of markets around the world which fell on Thursday after the Dubai government requested a debt standstill. The government's investment arm, Dubai World, asked investors for extra time to make its debt payments. The conglomerate known as “Dubai's flag bearer in global investments” is now $60bn in debt and has sought a six-month moratorium on repayments. This amount is greater than Dubai’s GDP meaning that the Gulf emirate is now officially bust and the construction boom economy that turned Dubai into an international business powerhouse has collapsed spectacularly.

The Dubai news sent shockwaves through world markets. The emirate was already in a bad way having borrowed $80 billion to fuel the boom. In the global recession investors are now deserting Dubai in droves as it becomes "toxic". Profits have declined and assets are worth a fraction of the inflated boom prices paid. Dubai's ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has been feeling the pressure of the crisis. The Al Maktoum family has run the emirate since 1833 and brooks no criticism of its rule. He told journalists to “shut up” last week when they questioned him about tensions between Dubai and the other senior emirate partner Abu Dhabi.

There was more blatant media censorship yesterday. Authorities removed yesterday’s London Sunday Times from circulation featured a double-page spread graphic illustrating Al Maktoum sinking in a sea of debt. An executive of the paper in Dubai said The National Media Council ordered the paper blocked by distributors without providing a reason. UAE's media code prohibits publications from criticising the emirs and local media slammed international press coverage of the debt crisis.

International markets were calmed after the UAE’s Central Bank offered to stand behind Dubai World’s debts. Abu Dhabi's emir, Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, who is also president of the UAE, has said his government will bail out his debt-laden neighbour. Later this week, the Emirates Government will announce a rescue package. This will underwrite payment of a $4 billion bond for Nakheel, Dubai World's real estate developer, which matures in two weeks.

However Abu Dhabi may extract a high price for bailing out Dubai. It could take over lucrative assets such as the Emirates airline, Dubai ports business and the International Financial Centre. It may also seek to impose stricter Islamic standards on acceptable public behaviour. Abu Dhabi always looked askance at Dubai’s ostentatious wealth which was based on a brash culture of borrowing and exploitation of cheap labour. Without Abu Dhabi’s oil, Dubai launched an ambitious strategy of economic growth which turned an Arab fishing village into a global trading metropolis in 30 years.

Meanwhile the government lured construction workers from India, Pakistan and China with promises of big wages. They arrived in their hundreds of thousands only to find they were indentured, had their passports confiscated on arrival, hit with huge "fees" for their travel and accommodation and attacked by police if they had the temerity to strike for better conditions. They were also forced to live in slum conditions hidden away from the ostentatious wealth of the city. As Johann Hari in the Huffington Post wrote, Dubai is “a dictatorship based on slaves”. Abu Dhabi may bail its sister city out now, but as Hari says “there is no Bank of Morality that could provide a bailout for this sinister mirage in the desert.”

Do or Dubai for Liverpool

Rick Parry, the chief executive of Liverpool FC, has revealed that his club are on the verge of completing a takeover deal by Dubai investors. Parry told the BBC Sunday morning radio program Sportsweek, “A huge amount of work has been going on from both parts. I imagine we'll have something concrete to say relatively soon on that.” The Liverpool board has accepted a $450 million bid and the process is now going through due financial diligence. The new owners of England’s most successful football club will be Dubai International Capital (DIC), owned by the Government of Dubai.

DIC was established in 2004 as the international investment arm of Dubai Holding. Dubai Holding belongs to Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and is an umbrella company created to consolidate Dubai’s large scale infrastructure and investment projects. DIC owns several international brands including the former British budget chain Travelodge, the Tussauds Group and the London Eye. It is also the third largest shareholder in Daimler Chrysler with 2% of the company.

These investments fit in with Al-Maktoum’s plans to turn Dubai into one of the world’s great financial centres. In just 30 years, Dubai has morphed from a sleepy port with a population of a few thousand people into a thriving business hub, with a population of three million and a diversified economy that is the envy of the Gulf states. Dubai is obsessed with its status. It has two towers under construction which will vie for the largest building in the world when complete. One of these is the Burj Tower scheduled for completion in 2008 with an estimated height of 800m (almost 300m taller than the current tallest Taipei 101). The city is also home to the three largest man-made islands in the world, visible from outer space. With its oil reserves dwindling, Dubai is basing its future economy on real estate, aerospace, technology and tourism.

Tourism will be the key. Dubai attracted 30 million travellers in 2006, up from 13.5 million five years ago. It is building new airport facilities capable of handling more than 200 million passengers by 2015. Dubai is spending $30 billion on planes capable of flying halfway around the world which will make the city no more than 15 hours from key cities globally. Though only founded in 1986, Emirates Airlines low-cost model, widebody fleet, and central location has seen it emerge as a major threat to the established European carriers.

The country's leader Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is not listed in the Forbes rich list because it is impossible to work what belongs to him and what belongs to the Government of Dubai. He has a fortune estimated to be worth $14 billion of “family money” and another $13 billion of personal wealth. A combined value of almost $28 billion would put him in the top five richest people in the world.

Al Maktoum is 57 years old. He is the Vice-President and Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates as well as being ruler of Dubai. His elder brother Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum ruled the emirate until January 2006. He died of a heart attack when on holiday in Queensland’s Gold Coast. Brisbane airport was put on alert so his entourage of 33 family members and 300 bags could rush back to Dubai so the Sheikh's body could be buried at home within 24 hours.

Sheik Mohammed was immediately promoted to prime minister after his brother’s death. The sheik was educated in Britain at the Sandhurst Military Academy and retains a love for British traditions. Liverpool is not his first sporting investment. He is most renowned for his love of horse racing and his family own 3,000 horses worldwide mostly in Britain at the Godolphin stable. The family also owned the horse Jeune which won the Melbourne cup in 1994.

Liverpool is another thoroughbred and a blue chip football brand. They have won more leagues, European Cups, UEFA Cups and League Cups than any other English team. The enduring bond between the club and its supporters were forged on the field but also in the moral ambiguities of the Heysel and Hillsborough disasters. The Sun's treatment of Hillsborough gave Liverpool fans a finely tuned sense of victimhood based on their own guilt about Heysel. And that is matched by lack of ultimate success on the field. Despite their shock Champions League triumph in 2005, they have not won the English league since 1990. Liverpool's resources are dwarfed by Manchester United’s massive fan base and the wealth available to Chelsea through its Russian benefactor Roman Abramovich. Al-Maktoum will change all that. He will provide the finance for a new 60,000 seater stadium near Anfield and provide the funds for a squad capable of challenging United and Chelsea. The fans will overcome the feeling that an asset has been sold overseas. And Al-Maktoum will find Liverpool are a perfect fit for DIC’s expanding Best of British portfolio.