A Polish judge has approved the extradition of the Israeli citizen Uri Brodsky to Germany over claims that he was involved in the January killing of a Hamas leader in Dubai. The January assassination in Dubai of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh is believed to have been carried out by a Mossad hit squad which used 26 forged passports of Western countries, including Germany. The governments of Australia, Britain and Ireland each expelled an Israeli diplomat over the affair.
Brodsky was escorted into the Warsaw courtroom for a closed-door hearing. He was in handcuffs and his face was covered. "The court has decided to hand over Uri Brodsky to German authorities for judicial procedures there," Judge Tomasz Calkiewicz said following the hearing. "The court did not decide whether Brodsky committed the crime for which he is under investigation, the court only checked whether the extradition request fulfills the formal requirements and whether the suspect is correctly identified," he said.
The court said Brodsky had three days to appeal the decision, but the suspect's lawyer said it was not immediately clear whether an appeal would be launched. "My client can be handed over to German judicial authorities within the framework of judicial procedures over the following matters: falsification of documents and using false documents," Brodsky's lawyer Krzysztof Stepinski told reporters immediately after the ruling. "But the court did not take into consideration the German extradition request over participation in activities for foreign spy services," Stepinski said.
According to German news magazine ‘Der Spiegel’, Brodsky was arrested by Polish authorities on an international arrest warrant at Warsaw airport on 4 June on suspicion of obtaining a German passport by fraudulent means.
