Tennis players, wigs and Dubai assassinations: Welcome to the Middle East

In the past few weeks, while people in Europe and the USA have been distracted by Colin Firth's BAFTA award, Charlie Sheen's rehab admission or yet another school shoot-out in America, the Middle East has been passionately embroiled in the unfolding and still mysterious drama of the assassination of Hamas' military commander, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, suffocated in his hotel room at the luxurious Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh (source: Getty)

Almost perfectly planned and what seemed to be a successful assassination, now turns out to be a complete failure by Mossad (Israel's intelligence agency), whose plot has not only been completely uncovered, but its 20 or so agents involved, all identified. And to add even more drama to the story, the identities used by the agents were stolen from existing dual European-Israeli citizens, who for the most, have never set foot in the UAE. While Mossad still denies any involvement in the plot, most analysts in the Arab world, recognise Israel's signature. The European countries, in addition to Australia, whose citizens' identities were fraudulently used, have protested in anger to what is clearly a violation of international law.

The most ironic part of this story has to be CCTV footage of two of the agents, leaving the elevator next to Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, minutes before they kill him, dressed in full tennis garb, complete with sweat wrist bans, towels around their neck, a la Roger Federer, tennis balls and new shiny rackets. The British Telegraph newspaper published a few days ago a detailed account of how the Dubai assassination was orchestrated, an interesting read.

While the investigation continues, conspiracy theories abound on Arab TV networks, as is usually the case in a region fraught with suspicion and undercover operations...

To be continued...