Israel accused of secret service kidnapping
Israeli secret service agents have been accused of kidnapping a Palestinian engineer from a Ukrainian train in the middle of the night.
Officials are trying to verify his wife’s claims that he is being held in prison in Israel.
Direr Abu Sis, 42, went missing “under unknown circumstances” on February 19 after boarding a train in the eastern city of Kharkov bound for the capital Kiev, said Interior Ministry spokeswoman Victoria Kushner.
Abu Sisi’s Ukrainian wife, Veronika, 32, says he phoned her a week after he vanished to say he was being held in an Israeli jail.
She alleges the secret service Mossad seized him to sabotage a key electric power plant in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip where he worked as a senior manager.
“I don’t suspect it, I am sure of it,” Abu Sisi told the Associated Press. “My husband was the heart of the only electric station in Gaza, or rather its brain. It’s a strategic object and they wanted to disable it.”
She denied speculation that her husband may be wanted by Israel as a known Hamas sympathiser, saying he had never engaged in politics or any violent groups.
Abu Sisi, a Jordan native and father of six, was in Ukraine trying to apply for citizenship after spending 12 years in the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli group HaMoked, which defends the rights of Palestinians, says Abu Sisi has been held in an Israeli prison outside the coastal city of Ashkelon.
Israel’s prison service said it had no information on the case. The internal security service, the Shin Bet, declined to comment.
Veronika Abu Sisi said she was told by Ukrainian police officials that two unknown men boarded her husband’s train carriage near the central Ukrainian city of Poltava several hours after departure and escorted him out.
