Transcripts For WETA Worldfocus 20100217 : vimarsana.com

the deepening mystery over who killed a top palestinian militant. was israel behind the murder? in south america, new charges of human rights abuses by paramilitary groups in columbia. a leading human rights group says the government must do more to protect civilians. and, a mystery solved beyond the glamorous depictions, the surprising family secrets of king tut. from the different perspectives of reporters and analysts around the globe, this is world focus. major support has been provided by rosalindp. walter and the peter g. peterson foundation, dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility and addressing key economic challenges facing america s future. and additional funding is provided by the following supporters. good evening, welcome to world focus i m daljit dhaliwal in new york. we begin tonight with a story of murder and intrigue that is dominating the news in israel and beyond. the assassination of a hamas leader last month, a man who was in fact a founder of the militant palestinian group. and the commander of its military operations. thewa offkilled in a hotel in d. and the police there said this week that at least 11 professional assassins were involved. and it doesn t end there. the police also said all the suspects were carrying european passports, apparently fake, with many of the identities apparently stolen from british citizens living in israel with dual citizenship. even before this week, some suspected that israel s intelligence service, the mossad, was involved. and those suspicions have only grown. in tonight s lead focus, we want to piece together the mystery for you with the best of the coverage. from our partners. first, we go to dubai, where alex thompson of britain s itn has the unfolding of the plot. and the arrival of the suspected killers and their movements. all captured on videotape. reporter: hamas accuses israel. some of the israeli media accuse israel. dubai accuses israel. the emirates recommend tags of peaceful desert playground has taken a body-blow, to say nothing of relations with israel. tel aviv is neither confirming or denying it was a mossad hit squad. but dubai s police chief is pointing the finger firmly at israel. translator: for those countries who seek revenge from others, if they think it s right to carry out revenge with their own hands and to make up a team of killers so that they can get their revenge, this is the way of mobs, not countries. reporter: he released mug shots of 11 people traveling on european passports. six british, three irish, one french, one german. the british and irish saying don t exist. with assorted names like kevin, michael and one woman, gayle, and this man, britain melvin milledener lives in jerusalem and accuses someone of stealing his i.d. mossad has done it before. all of this it is claimed to send a senior team to dubai, knowing that the official mahmoud al mabhouh was coming here, too. the hit squad came in at almost the same time, within 24 hours, they, too, had traveled by taxi from the airport to the hotel to get ready. police released details cctv images of what they claim happened. from midnight into january 20th, mike and james arrived at dubai airport. separately, other members, gayle and kevin arrive from paris, coming if all over, france, germany, italy, switzerland. 11 in all, traveling on fake i.d.s, false european passports. they re shown going to shopping centers. checking into assorted hotels. changing clothes. appearances, using wigs and hats. some are even dressed for a tennis match. by 2:12 in the afternoon, some of the team are already assembling at the rotana hotel. at 3:25, their alleged victim checks in. police say one of the surveillance team is there with him and they all go into the lift together. they come out and follow mr. mabhouh to find out his room, 230. at 6:32 and 6:34, the police claim these are the two execution teams arriving in a room they ve booked, 237, close to room 230, where mahmoud al mabhouh will be elect ro cuted and strangled. as gayle and kevin keeps watch, mahmoud al mabhouh gets out of the lift and head to his room. the last images of him alive. part of what the early security forces see is ongoing war against hamas. it s the way it s regarded. it was involving the past in the killing of the israeli soldiers, still very much involved with some of the founders of the hamas. so they don t want to hamas to feel too comfortable. whether they re inside palestine or outside palestine. they want them to be basically on the run. reporter: and within 20 minutes, the entire team had dispersed going back to the airport in separate taxis, separate ails, separate destinations. these people, they say were professionals and left few clues. that was itn s alex thompson. for its part, the israeli government, specifically the foreign minister, neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the killing, which is the government s practice on such matters. as for those in israel, who found their names associated with the plot, imagine what their reactions must have been. jacky rowland of al jazeera english brings us that part of the story from israel. reporter: shock for a number of israelis as they woke to find their names attached to false photographs on the front page of several newspapers. these are the alleged assassins of a hamas commander killed in dubai last month. passport confusion is how one newspaper described it. but the people whose identities were stolen fear that something more sinister is going on. cctv pictures released by the authorities in dubai apparently show the suspects arriving at the airport and checking into the hotel where the hamas leader, mahmoud al mabhouh, was staying. it s widely suspected that the israeli spy agency, the mossad, may have been behind the attack. which is not good for the real pple behind these false identities. israeli television channels spoke to a number of the men whose identities were misused. these were their reactions. [ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ] reporter: the israeli authorities are making no comment on the operation or the naming of the alleged hit squad. but one former senior mossad official said he would be surprised if the israelis were behind the assassination because of the sloppy way in which it was carried out. jacky rowland, al jazeera, jerusalem. and among those who went to dubai to report on the assassination was long bender david, the chief defense correspondent for our israeli partner, channel 10 news, and he also interviewed some of those in israel whose identities were apparently stolen. he spoke about what he found with a channel 10 anchor. translator: six are british citizens and one german of these 11 people photographed by the dubai police. we spoke to some of them, these are mostly immigrants holding dual citizenship and they all say the same thing our passport was not stolen. we did not leave the country. of course not to dubai. in other words, their identities were stolen and this puts the operation in dubai under a very amateurish light. if someone wanted to cover up the identities of assassins, why choose the identities of israelis that would immediately point the finger at israel. is the fact that we re talking about the assassination and not the death of mahmoud al mabhouh due to health reasons a failure in itself? its clear that the assassins had a different goal. they left medicines in the room and in fact took the dubai police and hamas ten days to understand he was murdered. in the beginning, hamas said he died from a heart attack. so it worked up to a point, it was meant to be covered up as a death from natural causes. and the fact that everything was filmed, was the operation too big a risk? i have no doubt that whoever carried this out knew that it would be photographed. dubai is one of the only cities in the world that has announced itself as a safe city. the city is covered by a network of cameras. when i entered the same hotel the first thing you notice is the large amount of cameras, even the corridor leading to mahmoud al mabhouh s room has a camera. so it s very probable that the dubai police have a picture of the assassins entering his room. but you see that people changed costumes, changed clothing, disguised themselves. they were being careful. they knew they were going to be filmed from severalangles. for more on the mystery and the background of this case, we re joined by a man who followed arab political and military affairs at the pentagon in recent years. david shankar, director of the program of arab politics at the washington institute for near-east policy. thank you very much for joining us from washington. good to be with you. who was the hamas official that was assassinated and why might he have been targeted? well mahmoud al mabhouh was a senior military commander, a founder of hamas s military apparatus. and was wanted for kidnapping and killing of israeli soldiers back in the 80s. he s also an arms smuggler so he was a senior official based in damascus. and have you seen that his assassination will affect hamas s military operations? i m not sure in the short-term whether it will affect the operations. certainly it s a setback. but i think more so, it s a psychological blow to the organization. the fact that somebody can reach out and touch these officials, that they cannot operate with impunity in the arab world, is i think a new development. do you have any doubt that the mossad was behind his assassination? i think at this point it seems entirely likely. on some of the arab websites there are reports that mabhouh also had arab enemies. but i think by and large the evidence points to the mossad at this point. but would the mossad have been so amateurish as to leave the clear trail back to israel? it doesn t show great tradecraft, does it? no, it doesn t. if you look at the video that the security apparatus in dubai put forward, you see the operatives going into elevators, changing out of baseball caps, putting on wigs, fake beards. and this type of thing. it really does appear to be somewhat amateurish. they must have known that the cameras were all over the place. at the same time, the mossad is not infallible. this is a, a group that at assassinate khalid marshall in jordan about a decade ago and botched the operation and two mossad operatives were caught and apprehended by jordanian authorities. so they did whoever was in the operation succeed, in killing their target. and you mentioned that he did have other enemies. so if it wasn t wasn t israel, who else might have had a motive enough to kill him? well hamas right now is generating a number of enemies. or at least having difficult relations with egypt, with saudi arabia. it s unlikely that the states would take to trying to conduct this type of operation. most of the clues, i must say, really lead one to believe that this operation was perpetrated by israel. just the complexity and the amount of effort that was put into the operation, i think leads one back to israel. all right. david shankar, thank you very much for joining us. my pleasure. we would like to know what you think about all of this. tonight s question is should israel be more forthcoming about whether it was involved or not in the killing of the hamas leader? you can give us your opinion by going to the how you see it section of our website. and you can find that at worldfocus.org. also from the middle east tonight, the united states and syria appear to be repairing their relationship. president obama will nominate a career diplomat, robert ford, to be the first ambassador to syria in five years. and today in damascus, president assad met with undersecretary of state william burns, the highest-ranking american official to visit syria since the united states withdrew its ambassador in 2005, after the assassination of lebanon s prime minister. many blamed syria for that killing. but syria denied involvement. and a follow-up tonight, on pakistan s arrest of the number two taliban official in afghanistan. pakistani officials today that mullah baradar was providing useful intelligence that was being shared with the united states. he is the most important taliban figure to be arrested since the invasion of afghanistan in 2001. meanwhile the new york times reports that the arrest comes at a delicate time for the taliban. it reports that the taliban are in a fierce internal debate about whether to negotiate for peace or fight on as the united states prepares to send 30,000 more troops to afghanistan this year. some hardliners are arguing to continue the fight. but in recent weeks, the balance has been increasingly toward making peace. and in afghanistan today, this was the fifth day of the assault by nato and afghan forces on the taliban stronghold of marjah. a nato spokesman said that most of the objectives had been achieved. in the middle of the town, afghan soldiers raised their flag in the main market with u.s. marines saying they were now in control of the area. still, fighting continued in other parts of the town between taliban hold-outs and afghan and american forces. meanwhile, the u.s. envoy for the region, richard hole broo , holbrooke said some taliban members are reaching out to the government about the possibility of switching sides. said some ta reaching out to the government about the possibility of switching sides. we turn to south america, to the arrest of a fugitive right-wing militia commander in columbia. authorities say that anoulfo anoulfour galindo was arrested in bogota. he is face iing demobilized as t of the peace process with the government. but many other recent fused to lay down their arms. a leading human rights organization, human rights watch, has called that demobilization flawed. and as we go beyond the headlines tonight, we look at how it has documented the emergence of violent new successor groups that count thousands of members in their ranks and operate in three-quarters of columbia s departments or states. the groups are targeting ordinary people, threatening to dnap and kill them and their families. in a slideshow called documenting courage rumen rights watch profiles three men who have received death threats. a lawyer and a human rights activist, a doctor whose father was murdered. and a journalist who writes about the paramilitary groups. despite the threats, they continue to do their work. we hear from them, in their own words, with photographs by stephen ferry. [ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ] [ speaking foreign language ] for more on the columbian militia groups and their alleged abuses, we re joined by maria mcfarland, deputy washington advocacy director of human rights watch. thank you for joining us. thank you for having me. your organization recently said that new militias have arisen in columbia. who are these new groups and what, if any connection do they have to the columbian government? well the groups aren t so new. they re successors to the paramilitaries who terrorized the country for decades before the columbianent supposedly demobilized them a few years ago. in fact the government left the network, the criminal networks of these groups intact. it failed to really investigate them and make sure they were taken apart. and as a result, mid-level commanders of the paramilitaries just picked up the reins of the groups, continued their criminal drug trafficking operations and continued their serious abuses against the civilian population. we haven t documented a direct link to the columbian government, except in the sense that the government has failed to effectively confront the groups. it failed to make it a priority to, to fight them. and to invest the resources necessary to take them apart. we have at times documented toleration of the groups by security forces, though. and that s a serious concern going forward. can you give us some examples of these alleged types of abuses and some of the people who are being affected? the groups commit massacres, targeted killings. they will rape people, and they regularly threaten anyone who gets in their way, including human rights defenders, trade unionists, community leaders and ordinary civilians who don t follow their orders. we ve heard some estimates that columbia has as many as three million displaced refugees of war. what role do these militias play in this crisis? well the paramilitaries have historically been the actor most responsible for forced displacement of civilians. and these groups have continued displacing people. by going into towns and threatening them. saying that they re going to kill people. so whole families sometimes, whole communities, leave. often they just threaten individuals. and you have so many people being threatened now, that you have hundreds of thousands of columbians fleeing every year, their home. what role do you think that the united states should have in this situation? the united states can play a very important role by continuing to delay ratification of the columbia free trade agreement until columbia meets basic human rights standards. by dismantling these paramilitary groups, which are the main threat to trade unionists and others who are trying to assert their rights in columbia. all right, maria mcfarland, thank you very much for joining us. thank you. finally tonight, he was just 19 years old when he died. 3300 years ago. we re talking about egypt s king tut. who has fascinated the world since his tomb was discovered, almost 90 years ago. the big question is being, just why did he die so young. now there are some define tiff answers based on some of the most sophisticated testing ever done on a mummy. some surprising results tonight if our german partner deuche vella. two genetic tests for following protocol for genetic testing. retrieving dna from a 300-year-old dumb request wmy w challenge. the tests show that the boy king was not murdered. instead, the tests showed that the king s immune system was likely weakened by congenital diseases. he suffered from a cleft palate and a deformed foot. the weakness in the bones came because his father married his full sister. this could be a reason. tic testing not only pointed to king tut s father. but the female mummy found in his tomb was not only his sister, but also his mother. it s uncertain if he was queen nefertiti. that s world focus for now, a reminder you can find more news and perspective at worldfocus.org where the conversation continues online. i m daljit dhaliwal in new york. thank you for joining us. i m daljit dhaliwal in new york. thank you for joining us. good-bye. jacque lavista grew up on a ranch. we all depended on each other. the land is not going to give to you unless you give to it. today, her values reflect that experience. i think public television is very nourishing. and if you give something you ll get something in return. jacque included her public television station in her will. consider joining the community of people who want public television to span generations.