Ukraine’s authorities said this week that they don’t know how a Palestinian engineer disappeared from a Kharkiv-Kyiv train in mid-February before ending up in an Israeli jail one day later.
The disappearance of Dirar Abu Sisi, a manager at a power plant in Gaza, has raised questions about whether the Ukrainian authorities knew or were involved in what his Ukrainian wife claims was an Israel secret-service operation.
A United Nations official expressed concern about the disappearance, which Israeli authorities have refused to comment on, and Ukrainian officials say is under investigation.
“We are very disturbed that a person, according to his relatives, disappeared in Ukraine and after a very short interval appeared in a completely different country,” said Maksym Butkevych, a spokesman for the Ukraine office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
We are very disturbed that a person, according to his relatives, disappeared in Ukraine and after a very short interval appeared in a completely different country.”– Maksym Butkevych, a spokesman for the Ukraine office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
According to Butkevych and Abu Sisi’s wife Veronika, the Palestinian is now being held in Ashkelon prison in Israel. It is unclear why he is being detained, as the case is subject to a gag order in Israel.
According to his wife, Abu Sisi disappeared after visiting Kharkiv to submit documents as part of an application for a residency permit in Ukraine. She told the Kyiv Post that the conductor in his carriage had said Abu Sisi was taken from an overnight train from Kharkiv to Kyiv when it reached Poltava at around 1 a.m. on Feb. 19 by two unknown men.
The train’s chief, Oleksandr Kaldanov, told the Kyiv Post that he had been on the train, but had left the train at the first stop.
Veronika Abu Sisi said she believed he had been abducted by Israeli special services who wanted to cripple the work over the power plant where he was employed.
The Palestinian diaspora in Ukraine send a letter to President Viktor Yanukovych on March 4 asking him to help in the search for Abu Sisi. They received a reply that the matter was under investigation.
Ukrainian officials have declined to comment on the incident, although Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, on a visit to Israel, told local newspaper Haaretz on March 17 that he doesn’t want “to imagine that such things are carried out on the soil of a friendly state.”
Foreign security services feel better in Ukraine than at home. There’s no countering of their activities on the territory of Ukraine from the security services or counterespionage.”
– Hennadiy Moskal, a former Interior Ministry general.
Questions have been raised as to what role Ukrainian authorities could have played in the disappearance, or whether they even new that it had taken place.
“We really hope that we’ll receive an answer to our inquiry with information about what happened,” said UNHCR’s Butkevych.
The possibility of foreign secret services being involved was not ruled out by lawmaker Hennadiy Moskal, a former Interior Ministry general.
“Foreign security services feel better in Ukraine than at home. There’s no countering of their activities on the territory of Ukraine from the security services or counterespionage,” he said.
Ukraine’s Security Service, known as the SBU, declined to comment on Abu Sisi’s disappearance.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected] and Vlad Lavrov can be reached at [email protected].
