Poland plans tohand over Mossad agent to Germany Tuesday, 15 June 2010 02:07

WARSAW: Polish prosecutors yesterday said they aimed to hand over to Germany an Israeli suspected of being a Mossad agent linked to the January killing of a Hamas chief, despite Israel’s calls for him to go home. “The prosecutor’s office will ask the Warsaw court to order the handover to Germany,” spokeswoman Monika Lewandowska was quoted as saying by Poland’s PAP news agency. Lewandowska said that Germany had filed a European Union arrest warrant against the individual - a move which speeds up extraditions in the 27-nation bloc.

Polish officials have refused to identify the man, named in German media as Uri Brodsky.

According to German weekly Der Spiegel, which broke the story on its website on Saturday, Brodsky was arrested at Warsaw airport on June 4 on suspicion of obtaining a German passport by fraudulent means. The passport was used by people involved in the January 20 assassination in Dubai of Mahmud al-Mabhuh, a founder of the military wing of Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

Germany issued an international arrest warrant for Brodsky several weeks ago. The Dubai hit sparked a diplomatic crisis for Israel after the team of assassins - widely believed to be from the Israeli spy agency Mossad - was found to have used 26 forged passports from Britain, France, Germany, Ireland and Australia. The Warsaw arrest has also proved delicate diplomatically for Poland, one of Israel’s closest allies. On Sunday, Israeli ministers called on Poland to send the man home and said the country opposed his extradition to Germany.AFP

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