4:40pm UK, Friday February 19, 2010

Alison Chung, Sky News Online

The Foreign Office has strongly refuted claims that it knew about plans to use fake British passports in an alleged plot to assassinate a Hamas commander.

According to newspaper reports, a British security source claimed the Foreign Office received a tip-off that Israeli agents were going to use the documents in an overseas operation.

The source reportedly said he had spoken with an agent from the Israeli secret service Mossad, suspected of being behind the hit.

“He says the British Government was told very, very briefly before the operation what was going to happen,” the unnamed source told the Daily Mail.

“There was no British involvement and they didn’t know the name of the target. But they were told these people were travelling on UK passports.”

The 11 suspects in the investigation (six ‘Britons’ on bottom row)

But the FCO has insisted it had “no prior knowledge” of the operation or the involvement of cloned British passports.

It said it had only found out about the murder of Mahmoud al Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel last month when details appeared in media reports.

And added it was only told that fake British passports were involved shortly before authorities in the Gulf state went public with the information.

“Any suggestion that we knew anything about the murder in Dubai before it happened, including about the misuse of British passports, is completely untrue,” an FCO spokeswoman said.

Dubai police said that cloned passports belonging to six British Israelis and five Irish citizens were used by a hit squad that allegedly killed the Hamas commander.

Three people whose British passport details were apparently used by the killers have expressed their shock at being named among the suspects.

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague had called for “fuller” answers about when the Foreign Office was aware that fake British passports had been used.

He told Sky News: “I’m not suggesting complicity with Israel, I simply say there are news reports in the Gulf that this may have been known about by the British Government or other governments at an earlier stage.”

Opposition leader David Cameron said: “More questions need to be asked of Israel to make sure this never happens again.”

David Miliband branded the abuse of ID documents “outrageous” and demanded that Tel Aviv co-operate fully with the UK’s investigation.

But after being called in to discuss the situation with officials in London, Israel’s ambassador Ron Prosor flatly denied there was any “additional information” to give.

Senior officers in Dubai say they are “99% certain” that Mossad was behind the murder.

Tel Aviv has refused to confirm or deny the link.

It is believed the Hamas commander was in Dubai to buy weapons for the militant Palestinian movement when he was killed in a luxury hotel room on January 19.