Ukraine asks Israel for info on Abu Sisi abduction

Kiev security officials deny any involvement in Gazan's arrest and transport to Israel; Security service denies knowledge of affair.

By HERB KEINON, JPOST.COM STAFF
wife of abu sisi_311 (photo credit: Gleb Garanich/Reuters)
wife of abu sisi_311
(photo credit: Gleb Garanich/Reuters)
The Ukrainian foreign ministry summoned Israel’s ambassador to the Ukraine, Zina Kleitman, to a meeting in Kiev on Wednesday and asked for Israel’s position on the abduction last month of Palestinian engineer Dirar Abu Sisi.
Abu Sisi is currently being held at the Shikma prison in Ashkelon.
Israeli officials said the tone of the meeting was “friendly,” and that the Ukrainians neither issued a formal protest nor reprimanded Kleitman.
Rather, the officials said, the Ukrainians asked for information from Israel, a request the envoy forwarded on to Jerusalem.
The Associated Press, meanwhile, reported Wednesday that Ukrainian officials said they were not involved in Abu Sisi’s capture. A spokesperson for the Ukrainian National Security Service said the agency is not aware how Abu Sisi disappeared from the Ukraine and ended up in an Israeli prison.
The Palestinian engineer gave an account of his arrest to a lawyer from the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) earlier this week, the NGO reported on Monday.
On Sunday, Petah Tikva Magistrate’s Court partially removed a publication ban on the case.
PCHR said Abu Sisi told the lawyer that on February 19 he was traveling by train from Kharkov to Kiev to meet with his brother Yousef when three persons, two in military uniforms, entered his room on the train. They asked him to show his passport but he refused. Then they threatened him and forcefully took his passport. They forced him to get off the train at the nearby station of Poltava.
Abu Sisi said that he was handcuffed, hooded and transported in a car to Kiev. Once in Kiev he was held in an apartment where there were another six persons who introduced themselves to be members of the Mossad.
Abu Sisi said that the Mossad members immediately questioned him. The Palestinian engineer said he was then put on a flight that lasted between four and five hours before landing in a place unknown to him. Approximately 30 minutes later, the plane took off again for a flight that lasted about an hour. Upon landing, Abu Sisi found himself in Israel.