ISRAEL: Israel admits to holding missing Gaza engineer
Derar Abu Sisi, an engineer and deputy manager of the Gaza power plant, was reported missing last month in Ukraine after he boarded a train to Kiev but never made it.
First, bloggers reported it. Then came the mainstream foreign press, and finally, the story made it into the Israeli press via the revolving-door practice of censorship-approved quoting of foreign reports and maybe a few "I know but can't tell you" hints too. Israeli readers are accustomed to reading between the lines. A Palestinian human rights group has also now published Abu Sisi's account of his abduction.
A petition filed by an Israeli rights non-governmental organization wrested from the court permission for Israeli media to report with authority the basic information already out there, that the Palestinian engineer from Gaza is being held in Israel. Abu Sisi is in Shikma prison in southern Israel while being investigated. The gag order was only partially lifted and the full Israeli version of the circumstances of how he went missing in Ukraine and turned up in Israel won't be cleared for publication in Israel for another 30 days.
According to foreign reports, Abu Sisi arrived in Ukraine — where he had studied for a decade and earned his doctorate in electrical engineering — in late January. A few weeks later he boarded a late-night train to Kiev, where he was to meet a friend before going to the airport to meet his brother Yousef, who was coming in from Holland and whom he hadn't seen in years.
A few hours after the train arrived with no Abu Sisi, his brother reported the engineer missing. Veronika, the engineer's Ukrainian wife, accused Israel's Mossad intelligence agency of abducting her husband with the purpose of gaining information to sabotage the Gaza power plant. She told the press she didn't know what to tell their six children about their father, who had "disappeared off a train in a democratic country."
According to the brother, Yousef, Ukrainian authorities hadn't gone out of their way to help. In a YouTube video appeal uploaded earlier this month, he said he got no official answer from the Ukrainian government, which kicked him around "like a ball from place to place," and that the intelligence offices did not want to help him. "I accuse the Ukrainian authorities" of being "absolutely involved in the case," he said.
Maybe Israeli readers had to wait for weeks to hear what had happened, but Yousef knew before long. In the same video, he told of a phone call he received from his missing brother, who told him he'd been abducted and was held under arrest in Petah Tikva. He had also given him the number of the public defense lawyer he'd been appointed; Yousef said the lawyer confirmed his brother had been abducted and smuggled out of Ukraine and brought to Israel. His family has since hired a private attorney, Semadar Ben-Natan. According to reports, she has already met with Abu Sisi in Shikma prison, where he has been transferred.
Israeli officials were not commenting on the topic but a radio report noted that sources were nodding to foreign reports (again) about Abu Sisi being "deeply involved" in Hamas weaponry affairs.
Previously, the Associated Press had quoted a spokesman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Ukraine saying he didn't have the details of just how the engineer had wound up in Israel, "but unfortunately, what happened looks like a violent abduction and not a legal extradition." The U.N. also suspected local security forces had been involved.
Israel and Ukraine have been tightening up ties lately, including a mutual visa waiver and also on security issues. Earlier this month, Ukrainian Premier Nikolai Azarov made his first official visit to Israel and discussed bilateral relations with the press. Asked for his response in case the then-rumors that the engineer had been kidnaped by Israeli intelligence, Azarov responded: "I don't want to imagine that such things are carried out on the soil of a friendly state."
-- Batsheva Sobelman in Jerusalem
RELATED
Palestinian who went missing in Ukraine describes abduction by Mossad
Nothing new for Israel to include kidnapping to their crimes. Maybe the kidnapping of IDF recruits when they travel may show Israel that they are not immune from retaliation. The only thing which seems to get their attention is violence and they have no monopoly outside their fortress. They will cry foul and cite anti-semitism as the motive before reminding us of the Holocaust and their RIGHT to do what they please in this world as their big bought brother US will protect them and reward them for being the little punks that they are.
Posted by: Chris Z | March 22, 2011 at 11:17 PM
Israel has been kidnapping Palestinians for decades. Nothing new here.
Posted by: Gene | March 22, 2011 at 02:14 PM
It appears that Ukraine deported a man who they believed was a terrorist. He was a foreign student, studying there with the permission of Ukraine. It appears from the article that his studies were complete, and he actually lived in Gaza, since he was the assistant manager of the power plant there.
He was afforded a phone call and a lawyer was appointed to him. If he is deeply involved in Hamas weaponry, Israel has good cause to want to interrogate him.
Posted by: MissMarple | March 21, 2011 at 07:46 PM
Joe, they are our masters not allies.
Posted by: Jack | March 21, 2011 at 06:25 PM
This is our only so-called "ally" doing what it knows best.............
How come we, the American tax payers are asked to finance such unscrupulous bunch of hacks? Huh?
Posted by: Joe | March 21, 2011 at 04:35 PM
@A.S. Hart, thanks for noticing the mistake. Indeed, Ukraine does not take "the" before it, and we have corrected the post accordingly.
Posted by: Los Angeles Times Copy Desk | March 21, 2011 at 03:26 PM
Israel admits to holding missing Gaza engineer?
you mean Israel kidnapped a civilian in a foreign country, with complicity of Ukraine.
no need to sugar coat it
Posted by: binalaqsa | March 21, 2011 at 01:55 PM
1 Israeli is being held prisoner by Palestinians, while over 5,935 Palestinians are currently imprisoned by Israel.
Since the beginning of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories in 1967, over 650,000 Palestinians have been detained by Israel. This forms approximately 20% of the total Palestinian population in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).
The Egypt-Israeli peace treaty of 1979 has occasionally been mentioned in news reports on the current uprising. That treaty was an arrangement in which the Egyptian leader of the time, Anwar Sadat, stopped opposing Israel’s previous ethnic cleansing of close to a million indigenous Palestinian Muslims and Christians (at least 750,000 in 1947-49 and an additional 200,000 in 1967). This removed the most populous and politically significant country from the Arab front opposing Israel’s illegal actions and led the way for other nations to “normalize” relations with the abnormal situation in Palestine.
Posted by: woobie | March 21, 2011 at 01:45 PM
Isn't it time for Israel to stop the State Terrorism and be a civilized nation?
Posted by: Nazar | March 21, 2011 at 01:41 PM
Your article repeatedly refers to "the Ukraine."
Having heard this term many a time, and being curious, I called the local Ukranian consulate and was told that the country name is "Ukaraine" and is "the Ukraine."
Where's Edwin Newman when you need him?
Posted by: A. S. Hart | March 21, 2011 at 01:15 PM