More than two years ago on Feb. 19, 2011 a Palestinian engineer Dirar Abu Sisi mysteriously vanished from a sleeper train in Ukraine and ended up in an Israeli jail.
He has been
accused by Israeli prosecutors of building rockets and training fighters for
the Palestinian militant group Hamas, charges that he denied.
Since then
Abu Sisi has remained in solitary confinement – the only prisoner excluded from a deal by
which Israeli authorities pledged to end prolonged solitary confinement, the
prisoner’s rights group Addameer said.
Suffering from severe depression, Abu Sisi told his lawyer that every night he sees a
burning land and children unsuccessfully trying to escape from the surrounding
walls of fire. He believes his dreams may signify a new bloody Middle East
conflict.
In the two
years Abu Sisi has lost a third of his weight, suffers from a coronary disease, blurred vision and constant headaches, according to his lawyer. The Palestinian blames his ills on the decision to resettle together with his family to Ukraine from
the Gaza strip.
Because of a court ban, his lawyer
Tal Linoy is not allowed to reveal the details of how Abu Sisi
disappeared from the Ukrainian territory, but admits that “Ukraine and its security
forces were definitely involved.”
Linoy
believes that there was a secret deal between the two states, where Ukraine
assisted in the arrest operation on its territory. Soon after the Palestinian
went missing from the train on Feb. 19, Ukraine’s Prime Minister Mykola Azarov
visited Israel on March 13. A month later Ukraine’s then Interior Minister
Anatoliy Mogyliov visited Israel on April 13.
“I claim
that both received a fair refund for (their) assistance and silence, including
the signing of new and prolongation of old agreements that are advantageous for
Ukraine,” Linoy told the Kyiv Post.
Andriy
Makarenko, another passenger of the train claimed one of the two men who
entered his compartment and asked Abu Sisi to leave with them, flashed an identity card of
the SBU, Ukraine’s KGB successor agency.
Ukraine’s
officials deny any involvement in Abu Sisi’s abduction. The police closed a probe
investigating the disappearance of Abu Sisi soon after its opening. His wife,
Ukrainian national Veronika, filed a lawsuit against Ukraine for its
unwillingness to investigate his case but claimed the court proceedings were
blocked by the authorities.
Meanwhile,
in October 2012, the country was involved in another similar scandal, for which
it was again accused of letting other states abduct and repatriate their
nationals.
Russian
anti-Putin activist, Leonid Razvozzhayev said he was kidnapped from Kyiv by a
group of masked men, who carried him across the border to Russia and put him in
prison, accusing him of preparing mass protests there.
Russian
investigators later said that Razvozzhayev left Ukraine deliberately using his
brother’s passport. While leaving the courtroom in Moscow the opposition
activist shouted to his supporters that he was kidnapped in Ukraine and
“tortured for two days.”
Razvozzhayev,
just like Abu Sisi, was seeking a residence permit in Ukraine. And again
Ukraine said it had nothing to do with the story.
“Of course
we and our embassies are analyzing these cases,” Yevhen Perebyinis, the
spokesman for the Foreign Affairs Ministry, told the Kyiv Post. “But we are not
carrying out investigations. And as far as I know, at least in one of the cases
there was no one missing at all.”
Nonetheless,
the country has been criticized by foreign bodies, including the European
Union’s Refugee Agency, Amnesty International and EU representatives.
“Under
international law, it is illegal to transfer people from one country to another
without any kind of judicial or administrative process,” David Diaz-Jogeix,
Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia Programme,
wrote in a letter to Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka. “State agents do not
stand above the law. Like everyone else, they are subject to the law and
therefore any allegations of illegal acts of this nature by state agents must
be promptly, impartially, thoroughly and effectively investigated.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be
reached at [email protected]
