You're reading: Israel to indict jailed Palestinian engineer

JERUSALEM — Israeli authorities have informed a Palestinian engineer who vanished on a Ukrainian train and mysteriously turned up in an Israeli prison that he will be indicted next week, his lawyer said Thursday as her client appeared before a court in central Israel.

Attorney Smadar Ben-Natan said Israeli authorities did not tell her what the charges would be.

The arrest of her client, Dirar Abu Sisi, has been clouded in secrecy because of an Israeli gag order barring publication of most details of the case.

Abu Sisi, 42, disappeared in the early hours of Feb. 19 after boarding a training in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, bound for the capital Kiev. He surfaced days later in an Israeli prison. His family says he was kidnapped by Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

Abu Sisi appeared in a court in the central city of Petach Tikva Thursday for a brief hearing extending his arrest. Before entering the courtroom, Abu Sisi told reporters he was just a power plant engineer and that Israel "kidnapped me for no reason."

He also said he knew nothing about an Israeli soldier held in Gaza for nearly five years by Hamas-linked militants. Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine speculated earlier this week that Israel might have seized Abu Sisi to try to wrest information about Sgt. Gilad Schalit.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the case for the first time, saying that Abu Sisi belongs to Hamas, the violently anti-Israel group that rules Gaza. He said Abu Sisi relayed important information but did not elaborate.

Ben-Natan denies Abu Sisi is a Hamas loyalist and his Ukrainian wife alleges Israeli agents kidnapped him to sabotage a key power plant in Gaza where he worked. She has said he was in Ukraine to apply for citizenship.

Fellow engineers and neighbors told The Associated Press he was a Hamas supporter, based on his senior position at the Hamas-controlled power plant.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which sent a lawyer to visit Abu Sisi in jail, said he told his visitor that he was dragged out of his sleeper car, hooded and handcuffed by Israeli agents and forced on a plane bound for Israel.

On Thursday, the Palestinian ambassador to Ukraine, Mohammed Alassad, accused Israel of "piracy" in the Abu Sisi case, calling it "an international crime that must be punished."

Speaking through a translator in Kiev, Alassad said Palestinian authorities were still waiting to hear from the Ukrainian government how Dirar Abu Sisi ended up in Israel.

The Ukrainian government has said it was not involved in the operation and was waiting for an official Israeli explanation.