Murder in Budapest: was it another Mossad hit?

Back in the early 1990s, ITV filmed its detective series Maigret not in Paris, where George Simenon's famous novels are set, but in Budapest, regarded as a dead ringer for 1950s Paris and a place where production costs were much lower. It's a shame the pipe-smoking inspector is no longer walking the streets of the Hungarian capital, as his skills might have been of great help in solving a baffling murder case that has led to speculation from the US to the Middle East.
 
On Wednesday March 17, just after seven in the morning, Dr Bassam Trache, a 52-year-old veterinary surgeon with dual Syrian and Hungarian citizenship, was shot dead in his black Mercedes at a junction in Budapest's 16th district. The killer grabbed a black briefcase from the car and made off on foot.

Dr Trache, it was revealed, operated a money-changing business. A few years ago he was acquitted in court of attempting to bribe - with jewellery and Arab cakes - the head of the Budapest police's money-changing investigation division.

At first, his murder was regarded as yet another killing connected with the shady world of money-changing; in the past ten years, there have been no fewer than 123 murders connected with the business in Budapest.
 
But then a more fantastic theory to explain Dr Trache's murder emerged.

It transpired that on the very day that Trache was killed, two Israeli Gulfstream V-type jets were spotted flying low over the Hungarian capital, leading to speculation that, just two months after the assassination in Dubai of Hamas commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Syrian might have been the victim of a Mossad hit.
 
'Another Dubai?... IAF Planes Detected Over Hungary; Syrian National Assassinated', proclaimed the headline of the US-based Orthodox Jewish website Yeshiva World News. Turkish media speculated that Mossad agents had secretly landed in Budapest and assassinated Trache because of his alleged financial support for the Palestinians. In the New York Post, Andy Soltis mentioned Israel's "bitter relationship" with Syria and noted Mossad's track record of "assassinating dozens of targeted Arab terrorists, often in Europe".

Hungarian investigators were quick to scotch the rumours that Trache's death was somehow connected to the Israeli air incursion. "The only connection I have seen between the two cases is that they were in the news on the same day," remarked Richard Leyrer, the country's chief liaison officer with international police organisations.
 
However, the Hungarian government's line on what the Israeli planes were doing, and whether prior notice had been given to the Hungarian authorities about the flyover, has been riddled with inconsistencies, fuelling the rumour mill.
 
Defence ministry spokesman Istvan Bocksai at first stated that the ministry had no prior notification about the flights. But last week, as pressure from the opposition intensified, defence minister Imre Szekeres declared that "any claim that the military had not expected the jets or is not in control of the airspace is unfounded".
 
As to how much notice the Hungarians were given, government spokesperson Domokos Szollar said that the foreign ministry had received a request from Israel regarding the flyover two months ago, and had forwarded it to the National Transport Authority (NKH). Last week, however, it was announced that a leading official of the NKH had been sacked, with a further four members of staff disciplined, over their failure to consult Hungary's secret services before issuing a permit for the Israeli aircraft to enter Hungarian airspace.
 
And while Szollar claimed that Israel's flying manoeuvres were merely "routine", Hungary's transport minister, Peter Honig, conceded that they were not fully in line with Hungarian laws. Then the Hungary's HirTV claimed that the Israeli ambassador to Hungary, though denying the term "spy planes", had referred to the planes as reconnaissance jets.

But even if Hungary is one of Israel's strongest allies in Europe - it was one of only 18 countries to vote against the Goldstone Report into Gaza war crimes at the UN General Assembly - why on earth would the Israeli airforce feel the need to fly more than 1,000 miles to make reconnaissance flights over Budapest?

Speaking on television, Hungarian security expert Zoltan Balogh said he could not see the point of Israeli aircraft coming to Hungary simply to practice on what was busy airspace. He also pointed out that it would have been possible for the planes to have collected data from the ground with accuracy to the nearest millimetre.

In a further twist to the story, it has now been revealed that a high-ranking off-duty police officer witnessed the shooting of Dr Trache, but said he was too frightened by what he saw to intervene.
 
Was Trache's death simply another killing connected to score-settling in Budapest's underworld, with the Israeli flyover on the same day a total coincidence? Or was it another Mossad hit, with the Israeli planes playing a key role in the operation?
 
Probably we will never know. One suspects, however, that Israel doesn't altogether mind the speculation that it may have been responsible. One of the Jewish state's greatest weapons is the awe in which Mossad is held around the world - the belief that its security agency can kill anyone, anywhere, at any time.

To maintain its carefully cultivated image of omnipotence, it doesn't really matter if Mossad did actually carry out the killing in question. It is enough that people believe that it might have. ·