Sinn Féin councillor petitions Dublin on Hamas martyr

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, a 50-year-old father of four from the Jabaliya refugee camp in Gaza, was killed in Dubai on January 20.

Mr al-Mabhouh was a senior military commander of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and a founding member of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades its military wing.

Hamas say Al-Mabhouh masterminded the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers, Avi Sasportas and Ilan Saadon, during the first Palestinian intifada in the late 1980s.

Last month in the wake of Mr al-Mabhouh's murder it emerged that some of his killers - claimed by Hamas to have been from the Mossad institue for intelligence in Israel - had travelled to Dubai on false Irish passports.

Now Londonderry Sinn Fin councillor Gerry MacLochlainn has written to the Taoiseach Brian Cowen calling for action on the murder of the senior Hamas member.

He said he was writing in support of an appeal from the dead man's brother Mr Fayeg al-Mabhouh.

Mr McLochlainnn referred to Mr Fayeg al-Mabhouh's view that "the fraudulent use of Irish passports amounts to an attack on Irish sovereignty and to the Irish people."

The grieving Mr al-Mabhouh also said: "Ireland and Palestine have shared political experiences and I would like to thank the Irish people for your support especially your condemnation of Israel's war last year."

In a letter to Mr Cowen the local Sinn Fin man petitions: "I am appealing to you to take up this case with the urgency dictated by its nature and circumstances.

"The extra-judicial execution of Mr al-Mabhouh was an act of state terror and as such is as abhorrent as the SAS and RUC shoot-to-kill strategy which caused so much hurt and damage in the North.

"To carry out the killing in a sovereign country, Dubai, is a further contemptuous snub to international law.

"But not content with this the perpetrators used Irish and other passports to effect their attack.

"In doing so they assaulted our country, they attacked our neutrality and they placed our citizens in danger.

"If it can be proven that the Israeli government or Mossad carried this out then they have shown a flagrant disregard for our citizens and our country's sovereignty.

"They have attempted to implicate us in the squalid war against the Palestinian nation.

"As Taoiseach your Government must act. I am asking you to stand up for victims of state terror, defend our sovereignty and impose the severest sanctions on the Israeli state if this latest breach of international law is proven."