Israeli man in Hamas murder probe disappears

Until Saturday the name Michael Bodenheimer could be seen on a sign at an office building in the seaside Israeli city of Tel Aviv but the plaque has since been taken down, Israel’s mass-selling “Yediot Aharonot” said. It published photos of the nameplate to support the claim.

The man has not been been interviewed by media since his name appeared on one of several European passports that the Dubai police said were used last month by the killers of Mahmud al-Mabhuh, a Palestinian Hamas commander.
Unlike the other passports, the German passport bearing Bodenheimer’s name was apparently not forged, according to a report on Saturday in Germany’s “Der Spiegel” magazine.

The passport was delivered in Cologne on June 18, 2009 to an applicant who presented an Israeli passport issued at the end of 2008 and the marriage certificate of his parents, who were persecuted by the Nazis, it said. Last week Israeli media interviewed another Michael Bodenheimer, an ultra-Orthodox Jew living in Tel Aviv, who denied any involvement in the affair.