Fourth Australian passport used in Dubai hit

Submitted by Narayan24 on Tue, 09/03/2010 - 1:52pm

A fourth Australian has been named as a suspect in the assassination of a Palestinian militant in a Dubai hotel room in January.

Dubai police last week revealed a 27th suspect in the team of assassins it believed was responsible for killing Hamas commander Mahmoud Al Mabhouh.

More than half those identified share names with Israeli citizens with dual nationality.

Now, Interpol has released details of most of the suspects on its website and has named the latest suspect as Joshua Aaron Krycer.

The real Joshua Krycer apparently lives in Jerusalem and moved to Israel from Australia a few years ago.

A 2006 online newsletter of the Zionist Federation of Australia contains a photograph of Joshua Krycer.

The newsletter says he is a speech pathologist among a group of Australians working at a hospital in Jerusalem.

Three other Australians, Nicole McCabe, Joshua Bruce and Adam Korman, allegedly had their identities stolen and used in some of the fake passports held by the alleged assassins.

All of them deny any involvement in the assassination and say they have no knowledge of how their passport identities were stolen.

Dubai police have said they are 99 per cent sure that Israel was behind the assassination of Mabhouh, who was smothered with a pillow after being injected with a powerful muscle relaxant.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith has told ABC2 News Breakfast he will not comment on the latest development.

"So far as we're concerned we regard this matter very much as operational," he said.

"We've been working very closely with the the UAE authorities on this matter.

"I'm not proposing to be drawn on speculation on what we regard very much as operational matters."

Interpol says the 27 suspects named by Dubai police worked in two separate groups.

They say a smaller core group carried out the killing, while the second team helped by watching, following and reporting on Mabhouh's movements.

Dubai police say 12 British citizens, six Irish, four French and one German all had their passport details stolen and used in the assassination.

Source: ABC News