United Arab Emirates

Forget all the doom and gloom, the United Arab Emirates are going up, up, up! At least, that's what Rupert Murdoch, the conservative media baron and owner of News Corporation believes.

From the National>:

Fox International Channels, a subsidiary of News Corp, is making Abu Dhabi its regional hub for online advertising sales, documentary production and satellite television broadcast.

Murdoch and Fox are betting that the booming wealth of the Gulf states, combined with the enormous Middle Eastern youth population that consume media products produced in the Gulf, will spell big profits for online advertising in the region.

There are still many unanswered questions about the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh assassination, but one thing is clear: Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, the Dubai police chief, really enjoys the media spotlight.

Tamim, who's had more airtime than Larry King over the last few weeks, called another press conference today to urge Mossad chief Meir Dagan to "be a man" and admit his organization killed Mabhouh. Tamim also admitted today that it will be "very difficult" to catch the killers without help from Western countries (عربي).

Forensic tests on the body of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, the assassinated founder of the Qassam Brigades and a former high-ranking Hamas official, revealed traces of the drug succinylcholine, a muscle relaxant, that had apparently been injected into Mabhouh's thigh, according to Dubai authorities.

The new information on Mabhouh's killing was released today in a statement by deputy Dubai police chief Maj. Gen. Khamis Mattar al-Mazeina, who also said that Mabhouh had been suffocated by a pillow "so that it would seem that his death was natural."

Dubai police now say 26 people, not the original 11, were involved in assassinating Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

The updated list includes six new British passport holders, and three people each with Irish, French and Australian passports. Two of the names are women; the original list of 11 included just one woman, Gail Folliard.

Police also released two somewhat complicated graphics showing the movements of the alleged hit squad. We've posted them both after the jump. The first one shows nine members of the team traveling to Dubai in November 2009 -- reportedly to plot the assassination; the second shows their movements in the days before and after Mabhouh's murder. The group traveled through more than a half-dozen countries en route to Dubai.

Dubai police chief Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim says he has proof -- credit card receipts and phone records -- that Mossad was involved in killing Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.

"Among the new evidence available to Dubai police which incriminates the Israeli secret service, the Mossad, and confirms its involvement in the murder ... are telephone communications between the culprits who have been detected," Tamim said in the newspaper Al-Bayan.

"Dubai police also have reliable information that some perpetrators bought their tickets in other countries using credit cards bearing the same identity revealed" previously by the emirate, he added.

Tamim doesn't really elaborate, though, on how either of these link Mossad to the assassination. A credit card receipt by itself is not incriminating -- unless the billing address on the card is "Mossad HQ, Jerusalem, Israel."

(Updated below) I rag on Robert Fisk sometimes, but the man is doing some good reporting on the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh assassination. His latest piece looks at some of the inconsistencies in the British government's story -- remember, the UK says it doesn't know how the killers got British passports.

It was a source - impeccable, I know him, he spoke with the authority I know he has in Abu Dhabi - to say that "the British passports are real. They are hologram pictures with the biometric stamp. They are not forged or fake. The names were really there. If you can fake a hologram or biometric stamp, what does this mean?"

David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, said again today that his office didn't know about the British passports until February 15, shortly before Dubai police released the information publicly. But if Fisk's reporting is accurate -- if these passports have accurate biometric information on them, which is hard to fake -- well, that's an interesting wrinkle.

Interpol posted wanted notices this morning for the alleged Mahmoud al-Mabhouh killers. Here's the notice for Gail Folliard, for example, the lone woman in the group of 11; here's Melvyn Adam Mildiner, the Israeli/British dual citizen who appeared on Channel 10 news last night and said he hasn't left Israel in two years.

All 11 are wanted for "crimes against life and health" in Dubai, but the notices don't provide much more detail.

I'm not even really sure where to begin writing about the latest on the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh assassination. The story really jumped into the spotlight today, largely because of the revelation that more than half of the 11 people wanted for Mabhouh's murder used real identities -- but fake passports.

Dubai police identified six of Mabhouh's killers as British passport holders Michael Lawrence Barney, James Leonard Clarke, Jonathan Louis Graham, Paul John Keeley, Stephen Daniel Hodes, and Melvyn Adam Mildiner.

And it turns out that all six are real people -- British citizens living in Israel. The killers used their identities on forged passports; the names, birthdays and other biographical information were accurate, but the signatures and photographs were not, according to British authorities. Mildiner actually appeared on Israel's Channel 10 news today, and said he hasn't left the country in two years.

The Dubai police department today released photos of the 11 people allegedly responsible for assassinating Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last month -- and the chief of police says he's close to issuing arrest warrants for the group.

Everyone in the group held European passports, according to police: six British, three Irish, one French and one German. The lone woman in the group had an Irish passport. The Ma'an News Agency (عربي) and Al-Jazeera (عربي) both report that the group included two Palestinians; one of them reportedly met with the group's leader, a Frenchman named Peter.

Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai's police chief, says both Palestinians were arrested in the UAE as they were leaving for trips to China and the Sudan. Tamim said one of them acted as a "spotter" for the assassination.

The Mahmoud al-Mabhouh case has dropped out of the headlines for a few days, but it popped up this morning in The National, which interviewed Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim, the chief of the Dubai police department. Tamim still won't name the suspects -- but says he will issue an arrest warrant for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli Mossad is implicated.

The Golden Arches are a little less golden, at least in the United Arab Emirates: McDonalds sales grew by just 4 percent in the UAE last year, compared to 14 percent in 2008. Growth is expected to pick up a bit in 2010.

The McArabia is better than anything you'll find in a stateside McDonalds, by the way.

Ha'aretz says a preliminary inquiry -- conducted by Hamas -- concluded that Arab governments, and not the Mossad, are behind the murder of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month.

... details of a Hamas inquiry passed to Haaretz reveal that Arab states, not Israel, now top the suspect list. Both Hamas and Dubai police say that Mabhouh had enemies across the Middle East, any of whom may have had a motive for his murder.

Obligatory caveat: The paper doesn't say how it obtained the inquiry report. But I've heard several variations of this theory in the last few days -- either that Mabhouh, a weapons smuggler, was killed in an arms deal gone bad; or that one of his many enemies knocked him off.

No arrests yet, nor claims of responsibility, in the assassination of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh -- but officals in Dubai say they've got a lead.

Police said yesterday that the killers hold European passports. And today they told Ha'aretz the killers "left behind evidence" that could lead to their arrest; officials in Dubai have reportedly contacted Interpol for help with the investigation.

(Updated below) Hamas officials claim Israeli agents assassinated a member of their group, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, who had recently arrived in Dubai.

Mabhouh was found dead on Jan. 20 in his hotel room in Dubai. Izzat al-Rishq, a Damascus-based spokesman for the group, said he couldn't reveal the circumstances of the killing. Yedioth Ahronoth interviewed Mabhouh's brother, Faiq al-Mabhouh, who claimed Mahmoud was killed by "an electrical appliance that was held to his head." Other reports suggest he was electrocuted and strangled (عربي).

World leaders and clean energy enthusiasts are in Abu Dhabi for the World Future Energy Summit -- but oil ministers from the Gulf say they don't want to move into the future too quickly.

Abdullah al-Attiyah, Qatar's minister of energy, criticized the world for "scapegoating" fossil fuel producers.

"Why did Copenhagen fail? It's because when you go there you feel that someone is trying to create a scapegoat," he said, referring to last month's climate talks in the Danish capital. "You try to blame oil and gas producers."

The UAE's energy minister, Mohammed al-Hamli, made similar comments, telling the audience fossil fuels would "complement" renewable energy.

Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nayhan, the brother of the president of the United Arab Emirates, was acquitted yesterday of torture charges by an Emirati court -- despite a videotape that shows him assaulting an Afghan man.

The brutal assault was filmed in 2004, and originally broadcast last year on the American television network ABC. The tape shows Sheikh Issa assaulting the man with whips and wooden planks, shocking him with cattle prods, and driving over his foot with an SUV. Sheikh Issa was assisted by several men, at least one of them wearing a UAE police uniform.

The victim, Mohammed Shah Poor, allegedly shortchanged Nayhan on a grain delivery to his ranch.

Apparently when somebody asked Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud whether it might be too soon and too risky to finance and build a 1.1 km-tall tower in the desert, Saud shook his keffiyeh'd head and said, "لا."

Saud's business conglomerate, Kingdom Holdings, is planning to build the monstrosity known as Kingdom Tower and make it the centerpiece of the as-yet-nonexistent Kingdom City, "one of the largest and most ambitious projects" in Saudi Arabia, designed to house some 80,000 people, according the National.

The 828-meter tall Burj Dubai finally opened Monday in the Gulf emirate of the same name, only to be promptly renamed the Burj Khalifa in honor of the ruler of neighboring Abu Dhabi, who was kind enough (or self-interested enough) to loan Dubai $10 billion to bail out troubled, government-owned investment authorities and their real estate arms.

As Gregg noted earlier today, the cash-strapped Dubai investment authority known as Dubai World has received a $10 billion indirect bailout from Abu Dhabi, a fellow emirate of Dubai's and the capital of the United Arab Emirates. The Abu Dhabi bailout will go to the general Dubai Financial Support Fund, which aids struggling emirate companies, but Dubai World will receive a large chunk.

The announcement sparked a rally in shares of bonds issued by Nakheel, a real estate arm of Dubai World, which owed a $3.52 billion Islamic bond today and had seemed unable to pay the full amount as of days ago. Such a dramatic turn has market watchers chattering: the Financial Times' Alphaville blog notes that anyone who bought shares of the once-depressed Nakheel 2009 bond (or its sister bond due in 2011) has "made several large sacks of money."

Back in November, Abu Dhabi participated in a bond sale to help Dubai raise debt, but only for $5 billion, of which only $1 billion was remitted immediately. So what changed since then, and who stood to gain?

Abu Dhabi announced a $10 billion bailout today for its cash-strapped neighbor; the last-minute capital infusion allows Dubai World to pay a $3.5 billion Islamic bond that came due today.

The money will first be transferred to the Dubai Financial Support Fund, which supports struggling companies in the emirate, according to a statement released by the Dubai government. The first $3.5 billion will pay off the bond issue.

The remaining funds would also provide for interest expenses and company working capital through April 30, 2010 - conditioned on the company being successful in negotiating a standstill as previously announced.

The $10 billion will also be used to pay Dubai World's contractors, many of whom have long complained that they haven't been paid for their services.

I'm sure the Majlis is quite tardy to this party, but since we're just getting into the Gulf-financial-reporting game here, I thought I'd let the readers know that we've now discovered the National's Current Account blog, edited by Wayne Arnold. Undoubtedly a useful resources in the months to come.

Arnold blogged yesterday (and wrote in his column) that Dubai, and by extension the other emirates in the UAE, should not be expected to bail out Dubai World. Aside from the moral hazard argument, which we in the United States seem to have set aside for now, Arnold argues that an emirate-to-emirate-owned-corporation bailout just doesn't have any logic to it:

Some news articles on the situation have even suggested that Abu Dhabi would offer help directly to [Dubai World real estate arm] Nakheel, which demonstrates an extraordinary misunderstanding of the relationship of Nakheel to its parent, Dubai World, and between one emirate and another. This would be akin to, say, Germany moving to buy GM with state funds in order to prevent layoffs at Opel.