A senior EU diplomat said on Sunday that Israel's suspected role in the slaying of a Hamas militant in Dubai and the killers' alleged use of forged EU passports will harm Israel's relations with the European bloc, HaAretz reported.
The official said the passport controversy will be harmful for the way Israel is treated by the EU since it comes on top of strong criticism over Israel's 2008 attack on Gaza.
The EU diplomat spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive topic on Sunday, a day before the EU's 27 foreign ministers are due to meet in Brussels. Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman will also be in Brussels to see EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, among others.
Dubai police chief Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim said that the assassins in Dubai made use of diplomatic passports, the Emirati newspaper Al-Bayan reported on Sunday.
Tamim also added that some of the assassins were already in Dubai for at least a year before the assassination, and used the passports in question.
Earlier on Sunday, a top Emirati official urged European investigators to launch full-scale probes into how fraudulent passports were used by a hit squad accused of killing Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
The U.A.E.'s minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, said the Gulf country is deeply concerned that the suspected assassins used expertly doctored passports from nations that don't require advance U.A.E. visas.
"The U.A.E. is deeply concerned by the fact that passports of close allies, whose nationals currently enjoy preferential visa waivers, were illegally used to commit this crime," Gargash said in a statement, carried by the Emirates' state-run news agency WAM on Sunday.
Dubai's police chief Tamim has blamed Israel's Mossad secret service.
"The abuse of passports poses a global threat, affecting both countries' national security as well as the personal security of travelers," the Emirates' Foreign Minister Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan was quoted saying in the same statement.
The statement gave no updates on the investigation, but said the Emirates' and Dubai authorities continue to scrutinize events that led to Mabhouh's killing and its aftermath.
The authorities also remain in close contact with the concerned European governments, the statement added and listed the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and Germany and Austria.
Emirati officials also said on Sunday that at least two more fraudulent Irish passports have been linked to the alleged hit squad accused of killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
Earlier this week, Tamim told reporters in Dubai that the alleged assassins used foreign cell phone cards to avoid being traced while calling a command center in Austria.
British ministers believe the forged U.K. passports used by the team accused of assassinating Mabhouh were secretly copied at Ben-Gurion airport, the British daily telegraph reported earlier Sunday.
British diplomatic sources said ministers were told in a briefing that the passport fraud was committed by Israeli immigration officials who stopped the British nationals, now living in Israel, as they went through the airport on recent trips.
According to the Telegraph report, officials believe the passport numbers were photocopied and then used to create new documents used by the hit squad.
The suspects used the fake passports bearing their own pictures, but with the names and numbers of innocent Europeans.
All six British passports were not biometric, which means they did not have a computer chip embedded in them. Experts told the newspaper the fraud would have been relatively simple to carry out.
The identities of French, German and Irish citizens were also used.
Germany probing identity of passport-holder tied to hit
German officials on Saturday said they are examining the identity of Michael Bodenheimer, the name that appeared on a genuine German passport allegedly used in Mabhouh's.
The authorities in the city of Cologne, where the passport was issued, began a probe, and federal authorities are now considering a move of their own.
According to German weekly Der Spiegel, Bodenheimer, an Israeli, applied for a German passport from the Cologne authorities. Bodenheimer presented documents that proved German lineage, including his grandparents' marriage certificate. He also showed his Israeli passport that was issued to him a year earlier in Tel Aviv.
The German passport was issued on June 18, 2009. That document was used by one of the assassination suspects in Dubai on January 19, a day before the killing.
According to Der Spiegel, Bodenheimer does not live in Cologne, as he had claimed in his application, and no other person by that name lives there. The magazine claims a man by that name lived in Herzliya until June last year.
Haaretz has learned that a Michael Bodenheimer lives in Bnei Brak. His wife told Haaretz in a telephone interview that "he has no German passport and he never asked for such a passport. He never visited Germany, except perhaps in transit on the way to the United States."
His wife added that the ultra-Orthodox family does not have any family in Herzliya and that even though Bodenheimer's grandparents were born in Germany, they emigrated to the United States, from where he immigrated to Israel 30 years ago.
"We are quiet people and are not used to so much attention," she told Haaretz on Saturday. "The past week since the news of this story broke has been difficult for us. The fact that someone is using his name does not make him involved in this story."
Bodenheimer studies at a kollel, a yeshiva for married men. He has said he was astounded to see his name on the list of suspects, supposedly belonging to a German citizen.
"At first we didn't understand what everyone was talking about," Bodenheimer's daughter said. "The picture that was published doesn't look like him at all. He is always busy with Torah study," she said, adding that he holds no citizenship other than Israeli and American.
German media have reported that the intelligence services of the country are certain that the Mossad was involved in the killing and that the foreign minister demanded that Israel explain why it used a German passport.
Israel's ambassador to Berlin, Yoram Ben-Ze'ev, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, where he was asked about information that can shed light on the killing of Mabhouh.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said Saturday that he does not expect relations between Israel and European countries whose passports were used in the assassination to deteriorate as a result of the incident.
"I do not expect a crisis in relations because there is nothing linking Israel to the assassination. Britain, France and Germany are countries with shared interests with Israel in countering terrorism," Ayalon said, naming three of the four countries whose passports were used. At least three of the suspects used Irish passports.