Quote:A UN official has confirmed that a Palestinian engineer, who disappeared under mysterious circumstances in Ukraine on February 19, is currently in Israeli custody. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Interior, Dirar Abu Sissi, 42, who was born in Jordan, but has lived in the Gaza strip for over a decade, had gone to Ukraine to apply for citizenship in the Eastern European country. His Ukrainian wife, Veronika, said Sissi disappeared in the early morning hours of February 19, shortly after boarding a train from Kharkiv to capital Kiev, in order to reunite with this brother, a Dutch national, whom he had not seen since 1997. His disappearance has puzzled Ukrainian police investigators. But on Thursday, Maksim Butkevych, representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Ukraine, told the Associated Press that Sissi was kidnapped by Israeli operatives and is currently in prison in Israel.

Quote:Abu Sisi, who is director of operations at the Gaza power generation plant, told the human rights group that he was travelling to Kiev on Feb. 19 to meet with his brother, who was coming from the Netherlands. Three persons, two in military uniforms, entered his cabin on the train and asked for his passport. Abu Sisi refused, but they threatened him and forcefully took his passport. They then handcuffed and hooded him and took him off the train as it stopped in Poltava.
He was then taken by car to Kiev where he was held in an apartment. Six people, who introduced themselves as Mossad agents, immediately began to question him. He was later put on a plane, which landed at an unknown place after about four to five hours. Approximately 30 minutes later, they took off again and the flight lasted for approximately one hour and upon landing Abu Sisi found himself in Israel.
Abu Sisi, who is married to a Ukrainian woman and has six children, was denied contact with a lawyer for 25 days during which he was heavily interrogated.

Shin Bet files indictment against rocket godfather'

Abu Sisi not only developed missiles in Gaza but was allegedly responsible for upgrading older rockets and increasing their range.

Israel, Ukraine and the mysterious case of Dirar Abu Sisi

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Palestinian engineer Dirar Abu Sisi vanished from a train in Ukraine earlier this year. He turned up in an Israeli prison nine days later, but is he really the brains behind Hamas' missile programme, as Israel claims?
On the evening of 18 February, a Palestinian engineer boarded a train in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov.
Dirar Abu Sisi was the manager of Gaza's main electricity power plant. He hoped to obtain Ukrainian citizenship, and was travelling on the overnight sleeper to Kiev.
He spoke to a friend on the telephone just as the train was pulling out of the station. All was well, he said, he was settling into his bunk for the night.
But when the train arrived in Kiev the following morning, he was nowhere to be seen. Somewhere along the line, Dirar Abu Sisi had vanished.
'Agents, Secret Service' "It was strange," said Andrei Makarenko, a young Ukrainian who shared a compartment with Mr Abu Sisi on the train.
Dirar Abu Sisi boarded a train at Kharkov station in Ukraine but failed to arrive at his final destination
Shortly after leaving Kharkov, Mr Makarenko says, three men entered the compartment.
They wore plain clothes. One showed an ID badge claiming to be from the Ukrainian Security Service. They checked Mr Abu Sisi's documents and took him away.
"It was like in a film, like in a book: agents, secret service," Mr Makarenko says. It was the last he or anyone else saw or heard of Dirar Abu Sisi for more than a week.
Nine days later Mr Abu Sisi's Ukrainian wife, Veronika, received a phone call. It was Mr Abu Sisi. He was in prison, in Israel.
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