Operation Plasma Screen In Dubai
A hotel maid in Dubai opens Room No. 230. The man lies peacefully on his bed. Medicine bottle on the nightstand. Door chained from inside. Natural death, the Police assume. Then, security cameras reveal the impossible. Over 600 hours of footage showing 27 operatives stalking one man through luxury hotels disguised as tennis players, tourists and businessmen.
They entered his locked room without breaking anything, ended his life without leaving marks and vanished across continents using passports stolen from innocent civilians. The year was 2010 and the world was about to witness the most documented assassination in history. An operation so brazen it was captured on film, yet remains officially unsolved.
This was Operation Plasma Screen, when Mossad turned a five-star hotel into an execution chamber while the cameras rolled. The Emirates flight touched down at Dubai International Airport at 14:30 hours (local time). Mahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh (February 14, 1960 – January 19, 2010) collected his single carry-on bag and moved through customs with the practiced ease of a frequent traveller.
Mahmoud’s passport listed him as a merchant. The immigration officer stamped it without questions. Outside, the afternoon sun hammered down on asphalt, still radiating heat from midday. Mahmoud climbed into a taxi and gave the driver an address. The Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel. What he could not see were the eyes already tracking him.
At gate 17, a woman in sunglasses watched him pass. Near the baggage carousel, a man pretending to read a newspaper noted the time. In the parking structure, another operative transmitted a brief message through an encrypted phone… “Plasma screen has arrived.” Mahmoud was not his real name, though he had used it for years.
Born in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp in 1960, he had grown from a teenager lifting weights in makeshift gyms to one of Hamas’ most valuable assets. His specialty was logistics, the silent architecture of war. He did not build bombs or fire rockets. Instead, he orchestrated the networks that moved Iranian weapons into Gaza through Sudan, Egypt and the labyrinth of tunnels beneath Rafa.
He was the man who made sure Hamas fighters had missiles when they needed them, anti-tank rounds when Israeli armour advanced, and money when operations required funding. Israeli intelligence had tracked him for two decades. His file at Mossad headquarters in Tel Aviv was thick with surveillance photos, intercepted communications and forensic accounting that traced millions of dollars flowing through his accounts.
He had been on their target list since 1989 when he personally participated in the kidnapping and execution of two Israeli soldiers. One of them, 21-year-old Avi Sasporas, was grabbed at a hitchhiking stop, shot three times and buried in a pre-dug grave. The second, Elon Son, was lured into a car by men dressed as Orthodox Jews, and killed with a Beretta pistol.
Mahmoud posed for photographs with both bodies before disposal. For those crimes, for his role in arming Hamas and for his position as a bridge between Tehran and Gaza, Mahmoud carried out what Mossad called a red page, an open authorisation for elimination. It had no expiration date. It would remain active until officially revoked or successfully executed.
And on January 2010 afternoon, as he checked into room 230 at the Rotana, that authorisation was about to be fulfilled. Dubai in 2010 was a city obsessed with security. Lieutenant General Dahi Calfan Tamim, the Chief of the Dubai Police, had convinced the Government to install one of the most extensive closed circuit television networks in the world.
US-made cameras covered streets, malls, hotels and airports. Every major intersection, every lobby, every elevator was monitored. The system was designed to deter crime and catch criminals. What it would actually document was something far more sophisticated. The operatives knew about the cameras.
They had studied Dubai’s security infrastructure for months. Yet, they proceeded anyway, not out of recklessness, but with calculation. The mission timeline was compressed. Mahmoud had travelled without his bodyguards, a rare vulnerability. His security detail could not get seats on his flight and would arrive the following day.
That narrow window was the only opportunity. Mossad’s planners had decided that speed mattered more than invisibility. They would move fast, execute precisely and disappear before the Dubai Police realised what had happened.
The first operatives had arrived on January 18, the day before Mahmoud. At exactly 06:45 in the morning, airport cameras captured two men travelling under the names Michael Bowdenheimr and James Leonard Clark. They carried European passports and moved through immigration without incident. By noon, two more had landed from Paris. Gail Foliard and Kevin Davon, Irish nationals according to their documents. They checked into separate hotels, established cover stories as tourists and waited for instructions.
Peter Elinger arrived at 02:29 in the morning on January 19, just hours before Mahmoud’s flight. Authorities would later describe his luggage as suspicious, though they did not specify why. Elinger was believed to be the Field Commander, the operational brain coordinating movements. Security footage showed him exiting the terminal, circling back inside, meeting briefly with another operative, and then taking a taxi to his hotel.
Every action appeared casual. Nothing suggested the precision of military choreography beneath the surface. By the time Mahmoud landed that afternoon, 11 operatives were already positioned across Dubai. Some waited in hotel lobbies. Others sat in rental cars. A few loitered in shopping malls, blending into the crowds of tourists and expatriates that filled the city.
They communicated through encrypted phones routed through numbers in Vienna, Austria. A deliberate misdirection designed to mask the operation’s true command centre. Mahmoud arrived at the Rotana at 15:20. He moved through the lobby with calm confidence. A man accustomed to travelling in hostile environments.
He asked for a room without a balcony, windows sealed, only one entrance. The request was standard for someone aware of threats. The hotel staff accommodated him without question, assigning Room No. 230 on the second floor. Before going upstairs, Mahmoud deposited cash and documents in the hotel safe. Then, he rode the elevator up, flanked by two men dressed in tennis outfits carrying rackets.
They stood close enough to note his floor, his room number, the exact location of his door. Mahmoud did not react to their presence. Tennis players were common in luxury hotels. He had no reason to suspect them. The two lookouts, later identified by their blue and white shirts, spent the next hour pacing the second-floor corridor.
One stood near the elevator making calls on what appeared to be a secure communication device. The other walked back and forth observing who entered and exited rooms. They were mapping the terrain, confirming guard schedules, and identifying the room directly across from Mahmoud’s room 237. At 15:47, a woman, named Gail, arrived at the Fairmont Hotel, several miles away.
Investigators believe it was where the final briefing occurred. The assassination squad gathered in a conference room, reviewed the plan one last time, synchronised watches and confirmed contingencies. By 16:14, Kevin Davon had left the Fairmont and was driving toward the Rotana. A couple of minutes later, Gail followed.
The machinery was in motion. Peter Elvinger, the Field Commander, booked room 237 from the business lounge of a nearby hotel. He made two phone calls from that location. One arranging the room, the other booking his own flight out of Dubai via Doha to Zurich. Then he left the lounge and arrived at the Rotana at 16:23. He checked in formally and obtained the electronic key and handed it to Kevin in the lobby.
Then, he placed a suitcase beside Kevin and walked out of the hotel. By 16:40, Elvinger was on route to the airport. He would board a 19:30 flight and be gone before the operation concluded. Kevin and Gail entered room 237 at 16:44 and 17:06, respectively. Over the next hour, two more operatives joined them, one apparently wearing a wig as disguise.
Security footage captured Gail leaving at 18:21 carrying several bags to the parking lot where other team members waited. She returned minutes later. The room now held the operational core… Kevin, Gail and four designated executioners. At 18:32, the four-man hit squad entered the Rotana. Two wore baseball caps, one white, one dark.
The others dressed in casual shirts, one green, one blue. They carried a black backpack and a black and white duffel bag. Cameras showed them ascending to the second floor and entering room 237. Inside that room, the team would wait for the precise moment to move. Mahmoud had left the hotel briefly at 16:23 for reasons never fully clarified.
Some reports suggest that he met a banker and an Iranian Revolutionary Guard contact at a nearby mall. Others claim that he simply went shopping. What is certain is that he returned at 20:24, walked past Gail in the corridor, who was smiling and talking on her phone, and entered his room. His key worked normally. The door showed no signs of tampering.
He had no reason to believe anything was wrong. At exactly 20:00 hours, the hit squad attempted to access his room. The hotel’s electronic lock system logged a failed reprogramming attempt using an unregistered key. They were trying to hack the door, recoding it to grant access without disabling Mahmoud’s own key.
The technology was sophisticated, likely rehearsed on similar locks during training. But at that moment, a hotel guest exited the elevator. Kevin intercepted the guest, engaging him in conversation while the team either stepped back or slipped inside undetected. The surveillance cameras positioned at angles that did not directly face the door could not capture the precise method of entry.
What happened inside room 230 remains partially unknown. No audio was recorded. No witnesses survived to describe the sequence, but forensic evidence revealed the brutal efficiency of the operation. Mahmoud was first immobilised with succinyl choline chloride, a fast-acting muscle relaxant injected into his right hip. The drug induces paralysis within 60 seconds while leaving the victim conscious, unable to move, unable to scream, fully aware of what is happening.
Higher doses shut down respiratory function, leading to death by asphyxiation. The team also used a stun gun. Burn marks were found on Mahmoud’s chest, behind his ear and on his inner thigh. The shocks were likely intended to simulate cardiac arrest, making the death appear natural. However, the final method was suffocation.
A pillow stained with his blood was discovered. He bled from the nose as he struggled. Broken bed slats beneath the mattress and damage to the headboard indicated violent resistance. Mahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh, the man called the fox for his ability to sense danger, fought his killers in silence while Kevin and Gail stood guard outside, ensuring no one interrupted.
The entire execution took 20 minutes. By 20:46, the first two members of the hit squad exited the hotel carrying the large duffel bag believed to contain the murder instruments. One left behind a latex glove. All four rode the elevator together, but exited separately to avoid drawing attention. At 20:47, Gail walked out, still on her phone.
Kevin followed at 20:51. The male and female lookouts stationed in the lobby since earlier that evening departed at 20:52. They scattered into the Dubai night, catching taxis to the airport in pairs. Within 12 hours, they would be dispersed across Europe, Africa and Asia, using forged passports and stolen identities.
Mahmoud lay dead in his locked room, the door chained from inside, a medicine bottle staged, and on the nightstand to suggest overdose. The scene was arranged to appear like natural death during sleep. It would take investigators 10 days to determine the truth. Mahmoud’s wife tried calling him that night.
The phone rang unanswered. Hamas headquarters in Damascus grew concerned when he failed to report in. At approximately 13:30 on January 20, a hotel maid discovered his body. He had missed checkout and staff went to investigate. What they found was a man lying peacefully on his bed. No visible wounds, no signs of struggle beyond the broken bed frame hidden beneath the mattress.
Initial reports lean toward natural causes. Sudden hypertension triggering brain failure, an overdose, cardiac arrest. Only after Dr Fozy Benomeran performed the autopsy did the pieces begin falling into place, the injection site, the electrical burns, the traces of succinyl choline chloride still detectable in his tissues, the blood on the pillow, the bruising on his nose, neck and head.
The official death certificate ultimately listed brain haemorrhage caused by electrocution from a powerful shock to the head. Dubai Police did not initially know who the victim was. Mahmoud had travelled under an alias, although Hamas later insisted that he used his real name and real passport. The confusion delayed the investigation. However, when Hamas finally disclosed his identity to Lieutenant General Tamim, the Police Chief exploded in fury. “Take yourselves, your bank accounts, your weapons, your forged passports and get out of my country,” he reportedly shouted at Hamas representatives. His anger was not just about the violation of Emirati sovereignty. It was personal. His office was located minutes away from the Rotana. The assassination had occurred practically under his nose.
Tamim ordered his investigators to pull every frame of security footage from the airport, hotels, malls and streets. What emerged was an astonishing timeline. Nearly 648 hours of video documented 27 suspects moving through Dubai like ghosts. The footage showed operatives changing disguises in restrooms, making calls through encrypted phones, trailing Mahmoud through lobbies and corridors, coordinating movements with military precision.
On February 15, the Dubai Police held a press conference and released an edited video seeking public assistance in identifying the perpetrators. The footage went viral. news agencies worldwide broadcast images of the tennis players, the woman in sunglasses, the men with baseball caps. Intelligence analysts studied the video frame by frame, marvelling at the operation’s audacity and its exposure.
The scandal centred on the passports. All the 11 suspects had used meticulously forged documents based on stolen identities from real citizens living in Israel. Six British passports, three Irish, one French and one German. The passport holders were genuine people, dual nationals, descendants of Holocaust survivors and ordinary citizens who had no knowledge their identities had been compromised.
One British passport belonged to an Israeli soldier killed in the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Another was tied to a man who had never left Israel in 30 years. Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs declared that the Irish passports had never been officially issued. The identification numbers were real, but the photos and signatures were fraudulent.
France discovered that four passports, including the one used by Peter Elvinger, were forged. Germany traced the passport of Michael Bowdenheimr to a man who had claimed citizenship by descent from a Holocaust survivor. A false claim that provided cover for the forgery. The diplomatic fallout was immediate. Britain expelled a senior Israeli diplomat believed to be Mossad’s local coordinator.
Condemnations echoed across Europe. Yet, those familiar with intelligence operations recognise the gestures as largely symbolic. Expelling embassy personnel signals disapproval, but the seniority of the expelled official indicates the gravity of protest. Beyond that, little could be done. The evidence was circumstantial. No one had been caught and the victim was a senior member of a group officially designated as a terrorist organisation by most Western nations.
Lieutenant General Tam publicly declared that authorities were 99%, if not 100%, convinced that Mossad had conducted the operation. He demanded the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Bibi Netanyahu and Mossad Director Mayor Dagan. The statements made headlines, but carried no legal weight. Israel maintained its policy of neither confirming nor denying responsibility.
Foreign Minister Avagador Lieberman dismissed the accusations as speculation, suggesting that perhaps the press had been watching too many James Bond films. The operatives belong to Mossad’s elite Caesaria unit, an organisation that exists in the space between legend and classified files. Cesaria recruits primarily from Israel’s special forces.
Thirteen former commandos, trained in close quarters combat surveillance and deep infiltration, used to live under assumed identities in apartments across Europe and the Middle East. Their neighbours did not know who they were. Their families sometimes did not know where they worked. Failure is not an option. Success is measured by silence.
Mike Harrari, a former Ciseria commander, once described the unit’s philosophy: We don’t apologise for what we do. We do what is necessary to protect our people. The operations are sanctioned at the highest levels. A red page. The authorisation of the assassination required joint approval from the Prime Minister and Defence Minister.
It was not a direct order for immediate action. It was permission standing indefinitely until revoked or executed. Mahmoud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhouh had carried a red page since 1989. Training for Cesaria operatives occurs in secret facilities to which only their spouses are granted limited access. Their real names are never disclosed, not even in private conversation.
They rarely interact with other Mossad divisions and generally avoid the organisation’s main headquarters in northern Tel Aviv. When they deploy, they do so alone or in small teams, relying on local assets. Cyanm volunteer helpers embedded in Jewish communities worldwide who provide logistical support without knowing the full scope of operations.
The Dubai mission had been years in preparation. Intelligence sources later revealed that Cesaria members had visited Dubai five times in nine months leading up to the assassination! They came in February, March, and June of 2009 to conduct reconnaissance, map security systems, test entry and exit routes. Their purpose was verification, confirming beyond doubt that the target was Mahmoud, not someone using his name.
The lesson of Lillehammer haunted every operation. In 1973, Mossad operatives had tracked Ali Hassan Salame, the Black September operations chief responsible for the Munich Olympic massacre to the Norwegian town of Lillehammer. Acting on faulty intelligence, they shot and killed Ahmed Bouchikhi, a Moroccan waiter and part-time musician who had no connection to terrorism.
The agents were arrested, imprisoned and Israel was forced to pay heavy reparations to Bouchikhi’s family. The humiliation was profound. Since then, Mossad protocol demanded meticulous identity verification before any lethal action. The Dubai operation succeeded in its primary objective.
Mahmoud was eliminated as Hamas lost one of its critical logistics coordinators. Weapons smuggling networks were disrupted. Iran’s direct pipeline to Gaza suffered a significant blow. However, the exposure of the operations methods created unforeseen consequences. Mossad’s relationship with Western intelligence services deteriorated sharply. The use of forged European passports angered allies who had previously tolerated Israeli operations as long as they remained deniable.
Britain and France voiced the strongest protests, viewing the passport scandal as deliberate provocation. France was particularly worried that Hamas might interpret the forged French passports as evidence of French complicity, potentially sparking tensions within France’s large Muslim population. In June 2010, the head of Mossad’s Cesaria unit, once considered a possible successor to Director Mayor Dean, offered his resignation. It was not accepted, signalling that Dean himself was assuming full responsibility for the debacle.
Reports suggested that France sent two agents to personally meet Dean and voice their disapproval. The message was clear. The line had been crossed intolerably. Yet within Israel, the operation was viewed differently. While no official acknowledgement was ever made, the successful elimination of a high value target demonstrated Mossad’s global reach and operational capability. It reinforced the perception that Israel’s intelligence services could strike anywhere at any time against anyone deemed a threat. The message was not lost on Hamas, Hezbollah or Iran.
No protection was absolute. No location was truly safe. Interpol added the photographs of 11 suspects to its most wanted list. The Dubai Police revealed that airport staff had conducted retinal scans on the same 11 individuals upon entry. Investigators discovered DNAs from four operatives and fingerprints from several others. The biometric data was entered into international databases. Yet no arrests followed. The operatives had vanished into the networks that created them, likely reassigned to desk duty temporarily, then redeployed to new missions under new identities.
In December 2010, a mysterious case added another layer to the story. Ben Zygier, an Australian-Israeli dual national and alleged Mossad operative, was found dead in his cell inside Israel’s most secure prison, Ion facility. His case was so secretive that guards knew him only as prisoner X, never being told his true identity. He was discovered in a supposedly suicide proof cell just two days after conferring with prominent Israeli Defence Attorney Avigdor Feldman.
Unverified reports later suggested that Zygier had been involved in the Dubai operation, but had betrayed the agency by handing intelligence over to the Dubai Police. Some sources claimed that he exposed the names of the assassination squad in exchange for protection. Following that, authorities allegedly transferred him into a secure facility, but Mossad managed to abduct him, bring him back to Israel and isolate him inside unit 15 at Ayalon Prison.
The claims were never independently confirmed. Zygier’s death was officially ruled suicide, though questions linger about how a high security prisoner could end his life in a cell designed to prevent precisely that. What makes Operation Plasma Screen significant is not just the assassination itself, but the fact that it was captured on camera.
For the first time, the world could see in forensic detail how a modern intelligence service conducts targeted elimination. The 648 hours of footage became a case study in operational tradecraft. Intelligence agencies worldwide analysed the video, noting both the successes and failures. The successes were clear.
Rapid deployment, precise coordination, effective use of disguises and forged documents, clean execution without collateral damage and escape before local authorities realised a crime had occurred. The failures were equally apparent. Overconfidence in the face of surveillance, insufficient attention to biometric data collection at airports, reliance on stolen identities that could be traced, and underestimation of capabilities of the Dubai Police.
Yet, even with all the evidence, no one was ever prosecuted. The real names of suspects remain officially unknown. Israel never confirmed Mossad’s involvement. Dubai issued arrest warrants that would never be served. Interpol circulated red notices that would never result in custody. The operatives who entered room 230, ended Mahmoud’s life and disappeared into the same shadows from which they emerged, protected by the impenetrable wall of state secrecy.
In the years since, new figures have risen to fill Mahmoud’s absence. Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, who succeeded him, was arrested in the United Arab Emirates in 2011 under suspicion of laundering funds linked to Hamas. The networks Mahmoud built continued to function albeit with disruptions. Iran found new intermediaries.
Hamas adapted its logistics chains. The cycle of violence continued, each death feeding the next round of retaliation. Operation Plasma Screen stands as a monument to both the capabilities and limitations of modern intelligence warfare. It demonstrated that with enough resources, planning and willingness to accept diplomatic consequences… a state can eliminate its enemies anywhere on the planet.
However, it also revealed that in an age of ubiquitous surveillance and digital forensics, true invisibility is no longer possible. The ghosts can still kill, but they can no longer do so without leaving shadows on camera. The hotel cameras stopped recording. The operatives vanished into airports and train stations across three continents.
Mahmoud’s body was returned to Damascus and buried in Yarmouk, Syria, where he remains a martyr to many. The Dubai Police closed the case without arrests. Mossad added another file to its classified archives. And somewhere in Tel Aviv, planners began studying the mistakes, refining methods and preparing for the next red page that would need execution.
What Operation Plasma Screen revealed is uncomfortable for those who prefer to believe the world operates by law rather than force. It showed that beneath the veneer of international norms and diplomatic protocols, there exists a parallel system where certain states grant themselves the authority to eliminate threats through violence wrapped in bureaucratic language and executed with surgical precision.
The cameras captured the method, but did not capture the faces behind the masks, the names behind the aliases or the offices where such decisions were made with signatures, instead of triggers.
The article, penned by Dèñg Deedon, was published by LifeHiddenMoments.Com on January 31, 2025. Collected from the author’s Facebook page.
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