Wife tries to find out why husband is imprisoned.
The wife of a Palestinian man held in an Israeli jail after authorities removed him from a train near Kharkiv has filed a lawsuit against Ukrainian officials.
The Ukrainian woman is demanding that officials investigate and reveal the details of what led to her husband’s arrest in February.
Dirar Abu Sisi, a 42-year-old engineer at a power plant in the Gaza Strip, has been charged with building rockets and training fighters for the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
He denies the charges and believes he was kidnapped by the Israeli Mossad spy agency while on a train journey from Kharkiv to Kyiv.
Ukrainian police investigated the case, but said they didn’t find information.
The Security Service of Ukraine, known by its SBU acronym, told Abu Sisi’s wife, Veronika, that investigators had no information that he had been transported to Israel by force.
But she doesn’t believe law enforcement officials and suspects that Ukraine was involved in her husband’s detention and removal from the nation.
She filed a lawsuit on June 15 against the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the State Border Guard Service, demanding that they disclose details of his mysterious disappearance and “send a request to Israel” to bring her husband back onto Ukrainian territory.
“If the Ukrainian law enforcement forces had no relation to the kidnapping of my husband … his arrest on the territory of the sovereign Ukrainian state and the following transportation abroad without sanction from Ukrainian officials, [then this] was a gross violation of Ukrainian and international laws,” according to the lawsuit filed in a Kyiv court.
Dirar Abu Sisi (AP)
Abu Sisi also said she has filed a lawsuit on June 22 against President Viktor Yanukovych, demanding that he intervene.
The Palestinian’s mysterious disappearance has raised concerns from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, while the Palestinian Ambassador to Ukraine, Mohammed Al-Asaad, called the furtive transfer of Abu Sisi into Israel “an international crime.”
The Foreign Ministry demanded in late March that the Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine, Zina Kalay-Klaitman, explain what happened, but has yet to receive any reply.
“We are doing all we can,” ministry spokesman Oleksandr Dikussarov said.
I think that despite what the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are saying, they were involved in this disappearance.
– Tal Linoy, Abu Sisi’s Israeli lawyer.
An Israeli court in the city of Beer Sheva on June 16 ordered Dirar Abu Sisi held until trial because of the severity of the charges.
Abu Sisi denies the allegations and claims his detention is a mistake.
His lawyer says Israeli authorities captured Abu Sisi because of an erroneous belief that he knew the whereabouts of Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, captured by Gaza militants five years ago.
The Israeli Defense Ministry says the investigation is a secret and officials there have repeatedly refused comment.
Abu Sisi’s Israeli lawyer, Tal Linoy, said even he has not been allowed to receive reports.
“I think that despite what the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies are saying, they were involved in this disappearance,” Linoy said.
“Otherwise, I can’t understand how it could all happen.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
