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Summary
Britain expels an Israeli diplomat on Tuesday to rebuke Israel for its alleged use of forged British passports in the assassination of a Hamas operative in a suspected Mossad hit, a UK government official said.Foreign Secretary David Miliband addressed Parliament over the issue, following an investigation into the use of 12 fake UK passports in the incident. The Foreign Secretary has said there are compelling reasons to believe Israel is behind the cloned British passports used by the alleged killers of a Hamas official in Dubai. David Miliband told MPs: Given that this was a very sophisticated operation, in which high-quality forgeries were made, the Government judges it highly likely that the forgeries were made by a state intelligence service.Taking this together with other inquiries and the link to Israel established by the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), we have concluded there are compelling reasons to believe Israel was responsible for the misuse of the British passports. Mr Miliband also confirmed a member of the Israeli embassy was being expelled from the UK at his request. Israel's foreign ministry said it regretted the UK's decision. Mossad, Israel's secret service, has widely been blamed for the murder of Mahmoud al Mabhouh in January.Dubai police investigating the case revealed some members of the suspected hit squad had travelled on British identities. Their passports appeared to have been copied from real documents belonging to at least 12 Britons living in Israel. Miliband added that the misuse of British passports was intolerable and said the Foreign Office would amend its travel advice to alert other British nationals to the risks that their passports might be misused in the same way. Hamas said it welcomed the British Government's decision to expel a diplomat and accused Israel of being a practising terrorist state.
