Dubai to spend more than $100 mln on security

ABU DHABI, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Dubai police plan to spend 500 million dirhams (about 136 million U.S. dollars) on security technology this year with the aim of having "cameras everywhere" following the assassination of a top Hamas commander in January, a local English daily reported Sunday.

Surveillance needs to be ramped up to meet the growing requirements of an expanding city, Dubai police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim was quoted as saying by The National.

There are 25,000 security cameras in Dubai and the number will increase as police begin to install a new type of smart camera that can rotate to cover what were once "dead spots," he said.

"We need to work according to a well studied strategic plan and not only react to events as they come along... We will have cameras everywhere," Tamim added.

Mahmoud Al Mabhouh, a senior commander of Hamas military wing the Al-Qassam Brigades, was found dead in his hotel room on Jan. 20, a day after he arrived in Dubai. He was wanted by the Israeli government in connection with the kidnappings of two Israeli soldiers in 1989.

Dubai police have said they are virtually certain that Israel's secret intelligence agency Mossad was behind the assassination in a complex operation that involved false Western passports.

Police were able to track down the suspected killers with the help of security cameras, according to Tamim.

"With the Al Mabhouh murder we were able to play back time through the footage captured by cameras," he said, adding that police analyzed 1,700 hours of images and "were able to pull the strings together and identify the suspects."

The police chief said residents in Dubai need not worry about their privacy as cameras are installed everywhere.

"The big number of cameras does not alter the privacy of the city's residents and visitors," he said.

"To intrude on people's privacy is not allowed by law and is not acceptable by our religion and tradition, so nobody in Dubai need feel scared about their privacy," Tamim said.

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