Dubai Police: Hamas Commander Drugged with Succinylcholine and Suffocated

March 1, 2010

Dubai police say forensic tests reveal that the Hamas commander killed at a Dubai hotel was drugged and then suffocated.

A hotel security camera shows men in tennis outfits following Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh into his hotel room

Dubai Police identified the substance used to tranquilize the Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh before he was killed.

At press briefing held at the Dubai Police General Headquarters, Major General Khamis Mattar Al Mazeina, Dubai Police Deputy Commander-in-Chief, said the killers used the drug succinylcholine to sedate al-Mabhouh before they suffocated him. Al-Mabhouh was found dead in his hotel room in Al Bustan Rotana Hotel in January 20.

According to Major General Al Mazeina, the assassins used this method so that it would seem that his death was natural as there were no signs of resistance shown by the victim.

A toxicological expert from the General Department of Forensic Sciences and Criminology at Dubai Police, said the drug succinylcholine, also known as Suxamethonium, is limited to short-term muscle relaxation in anesthesia and intensive care, usually for facilitation of endotracheal intubation. It has been in use since the pharmacological properties of succinylcholine were discovered around 1950 by K.H. Ginzel, H Klupp, and Gerhard Werner in Vienna, Austria.

He said the post mortem result revealed that the assassins had injected the victim with the drug. However, the results, did not show the amount injected as it is difficult to trace this drug.

Dubai police believe that a hit squad backed by Israel's spy agency, Mossad, carried out the January murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a founding member of the Hamas military wing.

Police have arrested at least two Palestinians in Jordan in connection with the killing and have extradited them to Dubai.

The murder caused an international uproar when it was learned that 26 other suspects in the case were carrying fake passports from Britain, France, Ireland, Germany, and Australia. Dubai police allege many of the fraudulent documents involved the stolen identities of people who also have citizenship in Israel.

Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has said there is no reason to assume his country was behind the murder.

Israeli officials have declined to comment further.

Special British investigators are in Israel to probe the use of false passports from their country and four others in connection with the murder.

All five countries have protested to Israel about the purported use of fake passports linked to their citizens.