Dubai police appealed for an international manhunt yesterday after releasing names and photographs of an alleged 11-member European hit squad - including six with British passports and three with Irish passports - accused of killing a Hamas commander last month.
The case as presented by Dubai authorities describes detailed planning that included suspects taking the same lift as Mahmoud al-Mabhouh before he was killed in an ambush-style attack in a luxury hotel room that took no more than 10 minutes. But questions emerged about the list of suspects after Dubai authorities released pictures, names and passport photos identifying them as six Britons, three Irish and one each from France and Germany. Dubai police identified Michael Lawrence Barney, James Leonard Clarke, Jonathan Louis Graham, Paul John Keeley, Stephen Daniel Hodes and Melvyn Adam Mildiner as British suspects. Gail Folliard, Evan Dennings and Kevin Daveron were named as Irish suspects, and Peter Elvinger, of France, and Michael Bodenheimer, of Germany, were also named as suspects.
However, Ireland said the three alleged Irish citizens on the wanted list do not exist. In Germany, officials said the passport number given by Dubai police for the lone German suspect is either incomplete or wrong.
Other elements also challenged the narrative presented by Dubai authorities, including how investigators pieced together the evidence pointing to an alleged European assassin team and why such an apparently well-planned operation would forget about the country's wide-ranging security cameras.
The Islamic militant group has repeatedly accused Israel's Mossad secret service of masterminding the killing and has vowed revenge.
Mr al-Mabhouh, one of the founders of Hamas's military wings, had been wanted by Israel for his role in the 1989 kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers on leave - something that was acknowledged by Hamas last month.
Days after his body was found on January 20, Israeli officials also pointedly accused Mr al-Mabhouh of helping smuggle rockets into the Gaza Strip, the coastal territory ruled by Hamas.
Meanwhile, doubts were raised about some suspects' identities.
In Dublin, Ireland's Department of Foreign Affairs said it could not find the three suspects in passport records and the numbers listed were counterfeit because they have the wrong number of digits and contain no letters.
Germany's Interior Ministry also said the five-digit passport number given for the lone German suspect is too short and lacks the letters that now appear on its passports.
Melvyn Adam Mildiner, 31, one of the men identified by the Dubai police as a suspect, was shocked when an AP reporter reached him on the phone in Israel and read him the information released by officials.
Mr Mildiner, who said he holds a British and an Israeli passport, confirmed the name and the passport number matched his but said the date of birth was a few days off. He said he did not know how anybody obtained his UK passport, issued in 2001 and never reported lost.
Britain's Foreign Office said in a statement yesterday that authorities were aware the "holders of six British passports have been named" as suspects in the case but added authorities believe the passports used were fraudulent.