News you may have missed #464 (Mossad edition)

• Mossad may apologize for use of UK passports. There are unconfirmed reports that Tamir Pardo, the newly installed Director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, is “drafting an apology to London” for the use of forged British passports by a Mossad hit squad that killed Hamas senior official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh a year ago in Dubai.
• NZ halted Mossad probe to safeguard secrets. New Zealand’s former Prime Minister, Helen Clark, was hesitant to publicly prosecute Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara, two Israeli Mossad spies arrested in New Zealand in March of 2004, fearing that the court case would expose counterintelligence methods. This according to the latest leaked US embassy cables released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
• Did Israel abduct and kill Iranian ex-deputy defense minister? Iran has asked the United Nations to help probe the reported death of Iran’s deputy defense minister, General Ali-Reza Asgari, allegedly in an Israeli jail. But Politico‘s Laura Rozen quotes well-informed Iranian-American activist Pooya Dayanim, who says Asgari was never in Israel.