My post on the shootings in France has brought tens of thousands of people to this site – but not to read my dull contribution. People are coming to read the comments from other readers.
Today’s development of the bomb squad descending on the al-Hilli house does not in itself worry me enormously. You may recall the massive terror scare that was ramped up when some Muslim students in Manchester were found to own a bag of sugar.
In fact we have the opposite phenomenon today, with the spook-fed “security correspondents” on TV lining up to tell us it is probably just everyday household stuff. This deviation from the standard Islamophobic “Muslims = bombs” narrative is so startling it makes me wonder why the “move along, nothing to see here” line is being taken so quickly.
My own security services sources insist that al-Hilli was not a person of current interest to the UK intelligence agencies and was not involved in anything clandestine. I have no reason to disbelieve them. On the other hand, the limited and confusing information in the media is almost entirely from official sources. I find it very strange indeed how little attention has been paid to the murdered French cyclist, and how easily it is presumed he was just a passerby. Surely it is as likely he was the intended victim and the al-Hillis the accidental witnesses?
Please do read the comments on my first entry on the subject to see the debate unfettered by the censorship in the mainstream media. This is perhaps my favourite comment:
From Janesmith101
All comments regarding Sylvain, Al-Hilli and a possible nuclear link are being removed from sites I’ve posted on in The Guardian, Independent and Huffpo UK.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/09/alps-killer-motive-baffles-police
Here was my comment, I added as a point of fact it was completely speculative and an unproven theory in a later comment, also removed.
Sylvain Mollier, the ‘passing’ cyclist, was in fact a nuclear metallurgist who worked for a french nuclear company called Cezus (a subsidiary of Areva). Cezus fabricates and processes zirconium into metal and nuclear grade zircoaloy for nuclear fuel assemblies – it also has other applications in aerospace such as components and ceramics for missiles and satellites. Mr Al-Hilli was also a skilled aerospace engineer, on what looks to be his first camping holiday.
What is the probability that two highly skilled engineers managed be at the same remote place, at the same time, yet still managed to end up dead as a result of what looks to be a military style assasination?
As someone else pointed out in The Independent comments, the deceased were found by a ‘retired’ RAF officer who, we assume, will recieve perpetual anonymity as a witness. If the police are looking for a motive, try an intercepted rendevous by a security service fixated on denying a hostile power illicit nuclear technology.
http://wrmea.org/component/content/article/162-1995-june/7823-israel-bombs-iraqs-osirak-nuclear-research-facility.html
The Huffington Post UK reports that this wasn’t the family’s first trip to the camp site. An earlier report had asked other camp site visitors whether they had seen the family before and they had replied they hadn’t. If this isn’t wasn’t the first visit by Al-Hilli, it might slightly increase the odds that he knew or had met Mollier before, this being the last in a series of rendevous of a transactional nature. Mollier lived and worked locally.
Again, I’m not sure of the truth of these reports, there is some very sloppy journalism, as there is always seems to be. I’ve read for example Mollier’s company Cevus descirbed as a steel firm something which it is patently not, but perhaps it may have been a detail lost in translation.
An interesting comment summing up some of the strange coincidences, at least, surrounding these murders. My other favourite comment calls me a “macchiavellian shill”.
I have only one thought of my own I want to add at the minute. Al-Hilli was a Shia muslim and had been on pilgrimage to Qoms in Iran. What if it is indeed true that he was in possession of no especial nuclear or defence secrets to pass on to the Iranians, but the Israelis thought that he was? The Israeli programme of assassination of scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear programme is a definite fact. It makes as much sense as anything else at the moment, as a possibility.
I am not saying that is what happened. But the directions in which the mainstream media is being so strenuously pointed by official sources, like the massacre of an entire family over an inheritance, are certainly no more inherently probable. Certainly as we are now told all the shots were from one gun, for the assassin to get each victim in the head with none of them being able to escape, indicates real proficiency with the weapon and a very high level of training.
When you ‘(over)moderate’ there is, of course just a/the possibility that we/you might loze a/the ‘significant thread ‘
[Mod/Jon: deleted examples of past abuse]
@ katie
Thanks for that.
There’s still more to that lot’s finances than meets the eye. Maybe they just don’t like payng tax. Maybe it’s not as straightforward as just that.
My gut instinct is the latter.
@ james
My son, get in there !
……………..
Son/ It’s MS Dopey if you don’t mind….though you may call me mistress 😉
@Anders7777
19 Sep, 2012 – 7:48 pm
I am inclined to agree; there is so much conflicting information coming from witnesses, and they all can’t be correct.
The investigators could start to get to the truth if they really had a mind too; I know I would, anybody would; but not if the case involves national security of mutliple nations.
I asked someone in the know (and don’t ask me to divulge my source) about how many people it would take in the team and they said straight away, three. Two shooter and one spare.
and Raf-guy is just not convincing on camera; I don’t think he was part of the team, but he is not telling the truth about his involvement in all this. and yes, I would put money on Raf-guy being SS.
OK – up until now I have believed that Brett Martin was telling the truth – OK not the whole truth but maybe 90- 95 % and was also withholding some stuff – perhaps for “operational reasons” to do with the investigation. The more I think about it the more absurd it seems. Why not mention the Frenchman Philippe D originally. Why does his testimony not match – there is the fact that eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable but that does not explain not mentioning him originally. We still do not know who called the emergency services for sure. But that also begs the question if either Brett’s or Phillipe’s testimony has been invented or even tweaked why not make them match more closely. It is more the late “appearance” of Phillipe D more that the discrepancies that matter. Why let knowledge of eyewitnesses trickle out one by one? Especially when first reports about the first witness make no mention of the second. Why was Phillipe D erased from the first version of this story and why was it necessary to de-erase him at a later date especially as his testimony only confused things? Unless confusion is the point – everyone concentrates on the scene of crime perhaps at the expense of the wider picture.
=====
So these are just talks with reporters, not testimonies as such.
If this ever went to trial, the opposing briefs would go by signed written and taped police interviews.
French rogatory interviews.
So either BM or PD or probably both backtrack on previous comments, blaming context, translation errors, memory problems due to shock or PTSD – in other words, TONS of wiggle room.
The BM charade could be used in court, because it was taped, but not under controlled conditions. BM could say for example the tape had been badly edited, and clarifying comments not included.
A good brief could have them both agreeing with each other during a trial.
So this disinformation is a ruse.
Tons of red herrings.
Different gun vehicle bullets ad nauseam every other day.
Get the picture?
So sans HARD DATA ™
The FAIRYTALE ™ stands and the public swallow it, whilst the media cannot do their job because of national security DA issues.
Job done.
@Phil T, sure. We moderate here very carefully/rarely normally, but on this thread it simply isn’t feasible to work through 3500+ comments. The solution is for people to stay on topic, and ignore abuse – which will get deleted anyway.
Self- censorship/restraint being the only ‘editorialization’ one realy ‘trusts’ (in so far as o e trusts oneself ((not to distort actuality/ representatikns of ‘it’ – or at least one’s limited ‘take’ on/of ‘it’))
Although obviously it’s a path that needs to be explored, might I suggest that there are very few middle-class families in which there have never been disagreements over money, inheritance and so on, esp. if the family has migrated and still has land/property in the country of origin. If not over property, then simply over money lent/wasted/favouritism from parents, etc. In other words, such a family – one with no arguments/disagreements/long-running tensions – would be the exception, rather than the rule.
@ Katie
In that same link above, ” “He took a bulletproof jacket,” said a neighbour who wished to remain anonymous.
“But he joked that if they came for him it would be a knock on the door and then a bullet through the forehead.”
……………….
Aye, I often put the bin out with my bullet proof vest on over my dressing gown, and tell my neighbours too, that if I’m whacked it will be from a bullet between my eyes…
Is this the sort of thing one tells one’s neighbours these days? If a neighbout of mine was supposedly an engineer and took to prancing about in a bullet proof vest and telling me that I think I’d put my house up for sale.
Roland at 7:59pm on 19.9.12, do you think he might have been SS or SIS?
Cheers Roland, we cross posted, your source knows his/her stuff. 🙂
As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of four highly seasoned men:
1. Tracer
2. Transporter
3. Helper
4. Killer
The tracer spots the target. The transporter guides the assassination team to the target. The helper basically serves as the driver who helps the killer and the killer is tasked with shooting the target.
I still say 4, two shooters, helper takes car of RAFman ™, basically disables him/disarms him.
Hence panic stations after it happened.
1. In this article
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/french-alps-shooting-saad-al-hilli-1327288
it says: French prosecutor Eric Maillaud said a Swiss bank account had been traced
Perhaps that account was with a bank in Geneva, a mere 66 Km away from Chevaline, and perhaps one of the reasons for this “family holiday” was to meet with their client advisor from the bank. (By the way, if the al-Hillis intended to cross the border into Switzerland on that day, that would explain why they had their passports on them when they were killed.)
2. An unrelated factoid which I only learned today: In Italy, calibre 7.65 is still very common because the law prohibits civilians from using “military” calibres such as 9 x 19 Parabellum.
@ peter
I read somewhere the other day that Saad didn’t have his passport with him. It was left at the camp. Sorry I don’t have a link; I can’t remember where I read it.
Suhayl Saadi
19 Sep, 2012 – 8:10 pm
Same thing but I just don’t credit them the intelligence part of the name they like to give themselves.
As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of four highly seasoned men:
That is so very wrong that I shan’t even bother refuting it. Gentlemen, I shall leave you to your Walter Mitty fantasies 🙂
Peter.
I agree. “Walter” is at he bar, methinks !
Point being that ex-raf guy was probably for real … and yet still … an agent of the brit. State/entity …because …
Former raf
From ‘muscular christian’ new zealand school/college background
& so on …
Inotherwords …
‘Stooges’ are not necessaily knowing ‘spooks’
& …
Peter
19 Sep, 2012 – 8:19 pm
&
James
19 Sep, 2012 – 8:23 pm
My figure for the team was a minimum to to the job that was done; there could have been four.
Oh, and I don’t drink.
As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of four highly seasoned men:
That is so very wrong that I shan’t even bother refuting it. Gentlemen, I shall leave you to your Walter Mitty fantasies
=====
Pasted from this book ;
(of course you disappear after being rumbled time after time:) )
Authors Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman in their book Spies against Armageddon: Inside Israel’s Secret Wars
state that the notorious spy agency has killed at least four Iranian nuclear scientists, including targeting them with operatives on motorcycles, an assassination technique used by the elite killers at Kidon.
The Kidon killers “excel at accurate shooting at any speed and staying steady to shoot and to place exquisitely shaped sticky bombs” and consider it their hallmark.
Kidon, known to be one of the world’s most efficient killing machines, is technically described as a little Mossad within Mossad.
Tasked with carrying out covert ops across the world, Kidon has embarked on a number of black ops and assassinations in different countries.
Those who kill for Kidon are selected either from within the Mossad spy agency or from among the natives of the countries where they plan to carry out assassinations.
For instance, in case of the nuclear assassinations conducted in Iran by Kidon, they basically hired people with Iranian or dual nationalities. One of the Mossad assassins was Majid Jamali Fashi who confessed he had cooperated with Mossad for financial reasons only.
Majid Jamali Fashi assassinated Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, a professor at Tehran University in January 2011 by blowing an explosive-laden motorbike via a remote-controlled device. He reportedly received training from Mossad inside Israel as well as $120,000 to assassinate the Iranian scientist. According to his confession, Jamali Fashi received forged documents in Azerbaijan’s Heydar Aliyev Airport to travel to Tel Aviv.
He confessed, “I woke up early in the morning and as we were trained I went to the warehouse. I had to prepare the box which contained the bomb. I took the motorbike out of the house and reached a location that I had to contact them. I went to the alley [where the professor resided]. It was vacant. No one was there. I brought the bike to the sidewalk and parked it in front of the house. They told me that the mission had been accomplished and that I had to discard my stuff.”
Jamali Fashi was executed under the Iranian judicial system on 15 May, 2012. Parenthetically, Azerbaijan has in recent years become an apparent haven for Mossad spies and assassins.
Another Mossad operative of Iranian nationality has been identified as Ja’far Khoshzaban, alias Javidan, who has been working under the auspices of Azeri security forces and who has been involved in nuclear assassinations. Iranian intelligence ministry has demanded the extradition of Mossad’s Iranian spy from Azerbaijan. Iran has reportedly obtained documents, suggesting that Azeri officials have aided and abetted Mossad and CIA agents in their targeted killings of Iranian nuclear scientists, namely Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. As a matter of fact, CIA is constantly mentioned along with Mossad as the main elements in the nuclear assassinations.
Ahmadi Roshan was assassinated on January 11, 2012 when an unknown motorcyclist attached a magnetic bomb to his car near a college building of Allameh Tabatabaei University in northern Tehran.
Using the same ‘sticking bomb technique’, the Kidon assassins attached bombs to the vehicles of Iranian university professors Majid Shahriari and Fereydoun Abbasi and detonated the explosives on November 29, 2010. Professor Shahriari was killed immediately, but Dr. Abbasi and his wife only sustained minor injuries.
As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of four highly seasoned men: 1. Tracer 2. Transporter 3. Helper 4. Killer. The tracer spots the target. The transporter guides the assassination team to the target. The helper basically serves as the motorcycle driver who helps the killer and the killer is tasked with shooting the target or attaching magnetic bomb to the car of the victim.
According to the book Spies against Armageddon, the Kidon agents are well-trained in shooting and placing “exquisitely shaped sticky bombs” and consider it their hallmark.
@Guess Who “with no proof whatsoever”
“As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of ….”
And on we go.
Isn’t this getting abit “I heard somewhere that….”
I admit I have served my time in Her M’s forces, but I have no idea as to how other “units” operate.
I wish had that knowledge…but I was busy, learning what I had to do !
As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of four highly seasoned men:
That is so very wrong that I shan’t even bother refuting it. Gentlemen, I shall leave you to your Walter Mitty fantasies
=====
According to Gordon Thomas, Meir Amit, who directed Israel’s intelligence service, the Mossad, stated that all actions done by the Kidon unit were sanctioned by the prime minister. Training for the unit can take as long as two years. All candidates are recruited from Mossad’s ranks. A special training base exists somewhere in Israel’s Negev desert.
Assassination teams usually consist of at least four members. One member is responsible for target tracking. Another member is assigned the role of transporter who must safely and secretly move the team to and from the target. The last members are the executioners. In addition to the core teams, there are many other agents that play a part in the operation. They are known as “sayanim”—the Hebrew word for “helpers”. Operations can take from months to years in planning and execution.
Books, films, hearsay…
Jeeez fella’s.
I have tried and wish to offer a debate on this as I am concerned.
But does anyone know where there is any “normal” debate being posted ?
I heard from a film, you can make cheese, just by thinking !
It’s getting odd in here !
As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of four highly seasoned men:
That is so very wrong that I shan’t even bother refuting it. Gentlemen, I shall leave you to your Walter Mitty fantasies
=====
Amazon
Mossad – The World’s Most
Efficient Killing Machine
By Gordon Thomas
http://rense.com/general32/ruth.htm
The usual composition of a hit team is four. One is the “target locator”. His task is to keep tabs on the victim’s movements. Another is the “transporter”, to get the team safely away from the killing area.
The remaining two men perform the execution. In the case of Gerald Bull they knocked on his front door late in the evening. The ballistic expert had just moved in. He had been assured he was safe by his Iraqi minders. But they had been lured away by some of the kidon back-up team.
These are known as sayanim – the Hebrew word for helpers. Throughout the world there are tens of thousands. Each has been carefully recruited to provide the kind of help that the kidon unit required to kill Bull.
I think I want to get banned now !
All I am heearing is “ARMCHAIR SAS” !!!!
Any bae you go in. It’s ex para, ex 42 commando, ex twenty two…ex “fecking something good, but I can’t spell it”.
Knock on fellas. Try harder !
As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of four highly seasoned men:
That is so very wrong that I shan’t even bother refuting it. Gentlemen, I shall leave you to your Walter Mitty fantasies
=====
[Adapted from Chapter 22, “Assassins,” in Spies Against Armageddon by Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman]
Whether it is a mini-Mossad within the agency, or even a planet of its own, the fact is that operatives in Kidon (Hebrew for “Bayonet”) are obscured by strict secrecy and further protected by military censorship of the Israeli media. Yet, an accurate window into the structure of Kidon, its modes of operation, and the moods and psyches of its members can be found in the pages of a novel.
[official emblem of the Mossad]
The author is Mishka Ben-David, and a thorough dossier describing the Kidon unit is nestled in a seemingly innocent book of fiction he wrote, Duet in Beirut, published in Hebrew in 2002. Ben-David, though, is not just a novelist. He was an intelligence officer. He was in the Mossad. And if that is not real enough, then consider that he was the chief intelligence officer of Caesarea, the agency’s operations department that runs combatants – Jewish and non-Jewish – who penetrate such enemy countries as Syria, Egypt, and Iran.
Caesarea also has, at its service for special occasions, Kidon. This “Bayonet” unit is kept small but sharp, and it recruits men and women who already have proven themselves in their military service or in other intelligence work. They are judged, through a process that includes copious psychological profiling, to have excellent self-discipline. Even more importantly, they have the skills needed for operations that are on the edge. Many of them come from special forces units, such as Sayeret Matkal and Flotilla 13.
They are trained by highly motivated instructors and work in small teams of two or four – each of them known as a khuliya (a Hebrew word for “team” or “connected link”). Although Kidon’s overall size has never been published, there are several dozen khuliyot, and the entire secretive organization is referred to as “The Team.”
They are so compartmentalized that their office is not inside the Mossad headquarters at the Glilot junction north of Tel Aviv. They hardly ever go there, and even with the very few Mossad operatives with whom they interact, they use assumed names – so as to be anonymous even to them.
In the field, they use a third name, and sometimes even fourth and fifth identities.
Their training includes almost anything one might imagine is needed for a thorough intelligence operation: surveillance, shaking off surveillance, and how to study an object – things, buildings, or even people – and memorize everything about it.
They become proficient at remembering codes and securely communicating during missions without raising suspicion. On top of conventional communication gear, this can include an agent touching her nose or pulling her earlobe, or some other form of sanitized signal to colleagues.
One of the skills is to remain cool as a cucumber in all circumstances, and not to be shaken by any unexpected interruption, question, or approach by people – never hinting that you are involved in anything unusual.
In Ben-David’s adventure novel, a female Kidon combatant and the senior man who trained her are sent to penetrate a factory in a foreign country that manufactures parts for Iran’s nonconventional weapons. They are interrupted when another Kidon team, serving as their perimeter guard, informs them with urgency that unexpected guests are arriving. The guards disperse, according to plan, and the duo know precisely where to go to meet a car that is waiting there for such an eventuality. Everyone keeps their cool. Panic is not in their lexicon.
Kidon personnel excel at the manual skills that are often required in the field: picking or breaking a lock, surreptitiously taking photographs, and planting electronic devices. They also learn to master a variety of vehicles: not only cars and vans, but also motorcycles, which have become Kidon’s vehicle of choice – almost a trademark of a team that leaves few traces.
The Team’s members are constantly practicing the use of weapons, and as wide a variety of weapons as has ever been invented. They are very good at firing pistols, often with silencers, whether while standing, running, driving, or riding a motorcycle. They know how to shape, plant, and detonate explosives, including innovatively designed bombs. They are well practiced at stabbing enemies with knives, injecting them with hypodermic needles, or administering poison by way of newly minted delivery methods. In addition, well trained in martial arts, Kidon operatives are adept at using their own hands and feet as weapons.
The description of their skills may seem torn from a James Bond novel or movie, but they are not figments of a writer’s imagination. Kidon men and women are authentic intelligence officers who are taught a wide range of crafts. It is a barely concealed fact, within the Mossad, that they are Israel’s assassins. Moreover, they are considered to be supreme intelligence officers for all seasons – not simply a death squad.
& if you really want to do hard core ‘mother fixated’ sub-flaubertian crap teflon-shitbag then …
@Anders
I prefer my men to just be lightly seasoned. Four highly seasoned men would be too much.
As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of four highly seasoned men:
That is so very wrong that I shan’t even bother refuting it. Gentlemen, I shall leave you to your Walter Mitty fantasies
=====
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/7254807/Mossads-licence-to-kill.html
By Gordon ThomasLast Updated: 9:14AM GMT 17/02/2010
The killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh bears the hallmarks of the ruthless Israeli intelligence service. One of the leading chroniclers of the agency gives a unique insight into its methods.
The Mossad assassins could have felt only satisfaction when the news broke that they had succeeded in killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a top Hamas military commander, in Dubai last month.
The Israeli government’s refusal to comment on the death has once more gained worldwide publicity for Mossad, its feared intelligence service. Its ruthless assassinations were made famous by the film Munich, which detailed Mossad’s attacks on the terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. Long ago, the agency had established that silence is the most effective way to spread terror among its Arab enemies.
In the past year, al-Mabhouh had moved to the top of Mossad’s list of targets, each of which must be legally approved under guidelines laid down over half a century ago by Meir Amit, the most innovative and ruthless director-general of the service. Born in Tiberius, King Herod’s favourite city, Amit had established the rules for assassination.
“There will be no killing of political leaders, however extreme they are. They must be dealt with politically. There will be no killing of a terrorist’s family unless they are also directly implicated in terrorism. Each execution must be sanctioned by the incumbent prime minister. Any execution is therefore state-sponsored, the ultimate judicial sanction of the law. The executioner is no different from the state-appointed hangman or any other lawfully-appointed executioner.”
I first met Amit in 2001 and through him, I talked to the spies of Mossad, the katsas, and finally, to the assassins, the kidon, who take their name from the Hebrew word for bayonet. They helped me write the only book approved by Mossad, Gideon’s Spies. Amit said the book “tells like it was – and like it is”.
Amit showed me a copy of those rules at our first meeting. After two years of training in the Mossad academy at Herzlia near Tel Aviv, each recruit to the kidon is given a copy.
The killing in Dubai is a classic example of how Mossad goes about its work. Al-Mabhouh’s 11 assassins had been chosen from the 48 current kidon, six of whom are women.
It has yet to be established how al-Mabhouh was killed, but kidon’s preference is strangling with wire, a well-placed car bomb, an electric shock or one of the poisons created by Mossad scientists at their headquarters in a Tel Aviv suburb.
The plan to assassinate Mahmoud al-Mabhouh had been finalised in a small conference room next to the office of Meir Dagan, who has run Mossad for the past eight years. The 10th director-general, Dagan has a reputation as a man who would not hesitate to walk into a nameless Arab alley with no more than a handgun in his pocket.
Only he knows how many times he has asked a prime minister for legal permission to kill a terrorist who could not be brought to trial in an Israeli court, along with the kidon to whom he shows the legally stamped document, the licence to kill.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh’s name had been on such a document, which would have been signed by Benyamin Netanyahu. That, like every aspect of a kidon operation, would be firmly denied by a government spokesman, were he to be asked. This has not stopped Dubai’s police chief, Lt-General Tamin, from fulminating against the Israeli prime minister.
Two years ago this week, Dagan sent a team of kidon to Damascus to assassinate Imad Mughniyeh. His Mossad file included details of organising the kidnapping of Terry Waite and the bombing of the US Marine base near Beirut airport, killing 241 people. The United States had placed a £12.5 million bounty on his head. Dagan just wanted him dead.
Mossad psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioural scientists, psychoanalysts and profilers – collectively known as the “specialists” – were told to decide the best way to kill Mughniyeh.
They concluded that he would be among the guests of honour at the Iranian Cultural Centre celebrations in 2008 for the celebration of the Khomeini Revolution. The team rigged a car-bomb in the headrest of the Mitsubishi Pajero they discovered Mughniyeh had rented, to be detonated by a mobile phone. As Mughniyeh arrived outside the Culture Centre at precisely 7pm on February 12, the blast blew his head off.
At Mughniyeh’s funeral in Beirut, his mother, Um-Imad, sat among a sea of black chadors, a sombre old woman, who wailed that her son had planned to visit her on the day after he died. She cried out she had no photograph to remember him by. Two days later she received a packet. Inside was his photograph. It had been posted in Haifa.
The list of kidon assassinations is long and stretches far beyond the Arab world. In their base deep in the Negev Desert – the sand broken only by a distant view of Israel’s nuclear facility at Dimona – the kidon practise with a variety of handguns, learn how to conceal bombs, administer a lethal injection in a crowd and make a killing look accidental.
They review famous assassinations – the shooting of John F Kennedy, for example – and study the faces and habits of potential targets whose details are stored on their highly restricted computers. There, too, are thousands of constantly updated street plans downloaded from Google Earth.
Mossad is one of the world’s smallest intelligence services. But it has a back-up system no other outfit can match. The system is known as sayanim, a derivative of the Hebrew word lesayeah, meaning to help.
There are tens of thousands of these “helpers”. Each has been carefully recruited, sometimes by katsas, Mossad’s field agents. Others have been asked to become helpers by other members of the secret group.
Created by Meir Amit, the role of the sayanim is a striking example of the cohesiveness of the world Jewish community. In practical terms, a sayan who runs a car rental agency will provide a kidon with a vehicle on a no-questions basis. An estate agent sayan will provide a building for surveillance. A bank manager sayan will provide funds at any time of day or night, and a sayan doctor provides medical assistance.
Any of these helpers could have been involved in the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Mossad has recently expanded its network of sayanim into Arab countries.
A sayan doctor in the West Bank provided details of the homoeopathic concoction Yasser Arafat used to drink. When he died in 2004, his personal physician, Dr al-Kurdi, said “poisoning is a strong possibility in this case”.There have been reports that more than a dozen terrorists have died from poisoning in the past five years,.
Within the global intelligence community, respect for Mossad grew following the kidon assassination of Dr Gerald Bull, the Canadian scientist who was probably the world’s greatest expert on gun-barrel ballistics. Israel had made several attempts to buy his expertise. Each time, Bull had made clear his dislike for the Jewish state.
Instead he had offered his services to Saddam Hussein, to build a super-gun capable of launching shells containing nuclear, chemical or biological warheads directly from Iraq into Israel. Saddam had ordered three of the weapons at a cost of $20 million. Bull was retained as a consultant for a fee of $1 million.
On the afternoon of March 20, 1990, the sanction to kill Bull was given by the then prime minister, Yitzhak Shamir. Nahum Admoni, the head of Mossad, sent a three-man team to Brussels, where Bull lived in a luxury apartment block. Each kidon carried a handgun in a holster under his jacket.
When the 61-year-old Bull answered the doorbell of his home, he was shot five times in the head and the neck, each kidon firing their 7.65 pistol in turn, leaving Bull dead on his doorstep. An hour later they were out of the country on a flight to Tel Aviv.
Within hours, Mossad’s own department of psychological warfare had arranged with sayanim in the European media to leak stories that Bull had been shot by Saddam’s hit squad because he had planned to renege on their deal.
The same tactics had been placed on stand-by on October 24, 1995, for the assassination of Fathi Shkaki who, like Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, had reached the top of Mossad’s target list as a result of his terrorist attacks.
Two kidon – code-named Gil and Ran – had left Tel Aviv on separate flights. Ran flew to Athens, Gil to Rome. At each airport they collected new British passports from a local sayan. The two men arrived in Malta on a late-afternoon flight and checked into the Diplomat Hotel overlooking Valetta harbour.
That evening, a sayan delivered a motorcycle to Ran. He told hotel staff that he planned to use it to tour the island. At the same time, a freighter that had sailed the previous day from Haifa bound for Italy radioed to the Maltese harbour authorities that it had developed engine trouble. While it was fixed, it would drop anchor off the island. On board the boat was a small team of Mossad communications technicians. They established a link with a radio in Gil’s suitcase.
Shkaki had arrived by ferry from Tripoli, Libya, where he had been discussing with Colonel Gadaffi what Mossad was convinced was a terrorist attack. The two kidon waited for him to stroll along the waterfront. Ran and Gil drove up on the motorcycle and Gil shot Fathi Shkaki six times in the head. It had become a kidon signature.
When the police came to search Shkaki’s bedroom they found a “Do not disturb” sign on his door – a signature that was repeated in last month’s Dubai killing.
Gordon Thomas is the author of ‘Gideon’s Spies’.
As a rule, the Kidon kill team is comprised of four highly seasoned men:
That is so very wrong that I shan’t even bother refuting it. Gentlemen, I shall leave you to your Walter Mitty fantasies
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Two kidon – code-named Gil and Ran – had left Tel Aviv on separate flights. Ran flew to Athens, Gil to Rome. At each airport they collected new British passports from a local sayan. The two men arrived in Malta on a late-afternoon flight and checked into the Diplomat Hotel overlooking Valetta harbour.
That evening, a sayan delivered a motorcycle to Ran. He told hotel staff that he planned to use it to tour the island. At the same time, a freighter that had sailed the previous day from Haifa bound for Italy radioed to the Maltese harbour authorities that it had developed engine trouble. While it was fixed, it would drop anchor off the island. On board the boat was a small team of Mossad communications technicians. They established a link with a radio in Gil’s suitcase.
Shkaki had arrived by ferry from Tripoli, Libya, where he had been discussing with Colonel Gadaffi what Mossad was convinced was a terrorist attack. The two kidon waited for him to stroll along the waterfront. Ran and Gil drove up on the motorcycle and Gil shot Fathi Shkaki six times in the head. It had become a kidon signature.
Well, of course, with Kidon, there might well be a number of ‘highly-seasoned’ (or even ‘lightly-seasoned’) women as well – as in the Dubai hit of the Hamas man. And then there’s also the Mordechai Vanunu honeytrap kidnap type of operation.