DUBAI // Hotels have been ordered by police to install thousands more security cameras after Mahmoud al Mabhouh’s assassination at the Al Bustan Rotana.
The hit squad that killed the senior Hamas leader – believed to be members of the Israeli spy agency, Mossad – were caught on closed circuit television in a number of hotels in the hours leading up to the murder in January.
Footage of the killers was broadcast worldwide and led to an international diplomatic furore over the use of stolen identities.
Michael Weyland, the general manager of the hotel division of the Landmark Group, which opens its first Citymax hotel in Al Barsha next month, said: “There’s a new CID requirement due to the incident in January.
“With this hotel, as we speak, we are installing another extra 22 cameras,” Mr Weyland said. The extra security cost Dh200,000 (US$54,000).
Mr Weyland said the company would have to install 100 cameras in another hotel it planned to open in Bur Dubai later this year, at a cost of almost Dh500,000.
Shahzad Butt, the director of business development at the Chelsea Group of hotels and hotel apartments, said: “We are opening a 49-storey tower property so we have to have close to 200 cameras. Before that incident, we had about 112 cameras covering the whole area, but we had to add another 85 to meet the new guidelines.
“By law, we are supposed to cover all public areas including corridors and all exit and entry points. But there has been a reminder to improve security.”
Another five-star hotel in Dubai said it would have to install additional cameras at a cost of about Dh1 million.
Other extra security measures include an increase in police inspections of guest registrations, more meetings between police and hotel security officers, changing the lock systems of the doors between rooms, and increased liaison between the CID and hotel security directors.
The Dubai-based security company Citytec is involved in the installation of the new security systems.
Nabeel Ahmad, its general manager, said since the al Mabhouh assassination the amount of business from hotels had increased by between 30 and 40 per cent.
Cameras with better resolutions were being called for and there had to be clearer monitoring of entrances, lobbies and hotel car parks, he said.
Full story at The National
