DIRTY DUBAI

I found this in the Sydney Morning Herald (but not yet in the Age and possibly never there given its stance on events that occurred there in January) - Dirty or clean, cash keeps rolling into Dubai.

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? Mabhouh's is not the only startling death. Sulim Yamadayev, an opponent of the Chechen President, Ramzan Kadyrov, was shot dead in the car park of an expensive hotel complex in Dubai last April. Dubai police accused Mr Kadyrov's first cousin Adam Delimkhanov of organising the assassination.

The plot thickens every day but some things must be kept hiddenfrom the public.