The secrets of Dubai

From the Sydney Morning Herald:

The Dubai police chief, Lieutenant General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, has been sharply critical of Israel in general and Mossad in particular, releasing many minutes of security camera footage to support his case. Australia and other western nations, including Ireland and Britain, followed suit.

But General Dahi has chosen to leave hidden at least as much as he has revealed. The autopsy report has not been made public, and neither has the crucial footage from the corridor that shows how the killers entered Mr Mabhouh's room.

Nor has any indication been given of what the Hamas leader charged with organising the flow of weapons from Iran to the Gaza Strip was doing in Dubai - also on a fake passport and with no security - and where he went between 4pm on January 19, after checking in to his hotel, and 8.24pm, when he returned.

Who had he come to meet? Why would he meet Iranians here and not in Iran, or in Syria where he lived?

This is a very good point - if Dubai cameras are all over the place, and if the assassins were following him everywhere, why are we not seeing any footage of Mabhouh from those four hours?

...Trouble is not the only thing that finds its way to Dubai. Airport regulations allow any quantity of cash in any currency to be carried into the country. It is now coming in planeloads from Afghanistan, where, according to airport declarations sighted by The Washington Post, up to $US1 billion a year, more than the government's annual tax revenue, is being flown in.

Several figures closely connected to the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, own villas in Dubai, and the Post has tied the son of Azerbaijan's President, Ilham Aliyev, to a $US44 million real estate spree on Dubai's waterfront - a feat made more impressive by the fact he was only 11 years old. Dr Karasik said: ''There's a lot of suitcases of money running around from a lot of different sources, so it's kind of hard to say which is bad money and which is good money.''

The Dubai authorities are hiding at least as much as they are revealing.