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Mahmoud al-Mabhouh
Photo: AFP
One of alleged assassins in Dubai
Photo: Reuters

Ireland considered recalling passports after Dubai hit

Report submitted to Dublin government reveals eight Irish passports used in killing of senior Hamas figure 'were manufactured or acquired by an agency of the State of Israel.' Department of Foreign Affairs rules against reissuing over 2.5 million passports on basis that it would cost more than €40 million

Ireland had considered recalling older passports following the forgery of eight Irish passports in the assassination of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai earlier this year, the Irish Times reported.

 

According to the report, the Department of Foreign Affairs decided against the move on the basis it would cost over €40 million (about $51 million) and cause major administration problems.

 

The department's Passport Service considered the recall of all passports issued before 2005 after it emerged that eight fake Irish passports were used in the Mabhouh killing.

 

The service’s report for Government concluded that the forgeries “were manufactured or acquired by an agency of the State of Israel”, a reference to Mossad.

 

In June, the Irish government acted on the findings of the report by ordering an official from the Israeli embassy in Dublin to leave the State. "The misuse of Irish passports by a state with which Ireland enjoys friendly, if sometimes frank, bilateral relations is clearly unacceptable and requires a firm response," Foreign Minister Micheal Martin had said in a statement.

 

Change would take 4 years

Documents released to The Irish Times disclose that the question of recalling the less sophisticated passports issued prior to 2005 was quickly dismissed by the Passport Service.

 

In internal communications earlier this year, the director of the service Joseph Nugent said there were over 2.5 million passports issued prior to 2005 that were still valid and in use.

 

“At this time the Passport Service could not cope with replacing this volume in any short time period,” he wrote.

 

Nugent said that such a change would add approximately four years of volume to the existing work of the service – some 600,000 Irish passports are issued each year worldwide.

 

The other major logistical problem identified by Nugent was that issuing 2.5 million new passports would lead to a “spike” in 10 years when the documents expired, unless the validity was staggered or the replacement was phased.

 

He said the cost of providing new booklets for 2.5 million passports would be €40 million, adding that there was no necessity to recall the pre-2005 passport on the basis that it was valid, internationally recognized, conformed to international standards and was of a type used by many other countries.

 

In a probable reference to the fact that forged British, Australian and French passports were also used by the alleged Israeli assassination team, the e-mail stated: “We are not aware of other recalls of similar type document in any other country."

 

The summary version of the Passport Service report, also released under the Freedom of Information Act, said the names of some Irish individuals had been used in the fake documents. But no records were found of individuals with the same name and date-of-birth combination as those used in the forged passports.

 

The report found that although six of the eight forged documents used numbers from real passports, none had completely stolen the identity of Irish citizens, as happened with British and Australian passports. It also found that the six Irish citizens whose numbers were used were not known to each other and had not travelled to the Middle East.

 

According to the Dubai police, Mabhouh had 33 assassins, who used French and German passports as well. According to Israel, the Hamas commander – who was assassinated in his Dubai hotel room on January 19 – was responsible for the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers and was in charge of the Palestinian terror group's weapon smuggling network.

 

 


פרסום ראשון: 08.20.10, 09:42
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