Canada denies arrest of Mabhouh hit suspect

Senior official in Ottawa calls Dubai police chief's claim that one of top Hamas operative's assassins was detained 'baseless'

Ynet|Published: 10.20.10 , 08:40

A senior official in Ottawa denied early Wednesday Dubai Police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim's claim that Canada had arrested a suspect in the assassination of senior Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

According to The Globe and Mail daily, Canadian officials speculated that the claim was an attempt by Dubai to embarrass Canada amid an ongoing row over airport rights.

One senior Canadian official called Tamim's claim "baseless," the newspaper reported, but Canada has yet to issue an official statement on the matter.

Two senior sources at the Canadian Embassy in the UAE told The Globe they did not inform the Dubai police chief about any arrest. “We are trying to verify this information with our colleagues in Ottawa,” one of them told the newspaper. “Tamim said we gave this info to the Dubai police, and we didn’t.”

On Tuesday Tamim told Al Jazeera that the suspect was believed to be one of the men caught on the security cameras of the Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel wearing white clothes and holding a tennis racket, while entering the elevator on this way to Mabhouh's room.

Tamim said he had been informed that Canada would send a representative to Dubai to provide further information, but did not know when a debriefing would take place.

Assassins killed al-Mabhouh in his Dubai hotel room in January, a hit widely blamed on Israeli intelligence agents. The large-scale operation involved a ring of suspects who wore disguises and held passports from countries including Britain, France, Germany, and Australia.