No real surprise here, the foreign press and international human rights organizations have pretty much figured out how the Mossad kidnapped the lead engineer of the Gaza power station. For those not familiar with Israel's disappearing of Derar Abu Sisi off a train, complete with "Papers Please", here is the back story:
Detainee Abu Sisi Discloses Detail of His Kidnapping in Ukraine to PCHR Lawyer, PCHR Calls for Immediate Release of Abu Sisi
http://www.pchrgaza.org/...
On 19 February 2011, members of the national intelligence agency of Israel (Mossad) kidnapped Derar Mousa Yousef Abu Sisi, 42 while he was in the Ukraine. Mr. Abu Sisi is the Director of the Operations, Department in Gaza Power Generation Plant. Mossad then transferred Abu Sisi to Israel. Abu Sisi is currently being detained in Ashkelon prison. Yesterday, 20 March 2011, a lawyer from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) managed to visit Abu Sisi for the first time.
Abu Sisi told the PCHR lawyer that on 19 February 2011 he was travelling by train from Kharkov to Kiev to meet with his brother Yousef who was coming from the Netherlands. Abu Sisi stated that 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. At this time he was handcuffed and hooded. He was 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 and then flew him by plane. The flight lasted between four and five hours before landing in a place unknown to him. Approximately thirty minutes later, they took off again and the flight lasted for approximately one hour. Upon landing Abu Sisi found himself in Israel. Abu Sisi told the PCHR lawyer that he was denied contact with a lawyer for fourteen days. This denial was extended for another eleven days. He said that he was placed under intensive interrogations and that he was denied his legal rights.
It should be noted that the Israeli security authorities imposed a media blackout regarding the kidnapping of Abu Sisi and prevented lawyers from visiting him to check on his health and provide legal assistance during the second period.
After knowing the details from Abu Sisi, PCHR has doubts about whether there was collusion from international parties in the kidnapping. Especially as Abu Sisi was not legally arrested by Ukrainian authorities and he did not have any appearances in domestic courts. PCHR has concerns over the deterioration of Abu Sisi's health and notes that he has cholelithiasis and he takes blood thinning medicines. He is experiencing serious psychological problems after going into long and continued investigation sessions. PCHR calls for the immediate release of Abu Sisi.
Now Israel has been denying they new anything about this, along with the Ukraine. It wasn't until the foreign press picked up the trail from Richard Silverstein. Even then, it sounded a little far fetched, because usually when the Mossad comes for you in the darkness of the night, you are never heard from again.
Now we all know it to be true.
ISRAEL: Israel admits to holding missing Gaza engineer
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/...
A petition filed by an Israeli rights non-governmental organization wrested from the court permission for Israeli media to report with authority the basic information already out there, that the Palestinian engineer from Gaza is being held in Israel. Abu Sisi is in Shikma prison in southern Israel while being investigated. The gag order was only partially lifted and the full Israeli version of the circumstances of how he went missing in Ukraine and turned up in Israel won't be cleared for publication in Israel for another 30 days.
------
Maybe Israeli readers had to wait for weeks to hear what had happened, but Yousef knew before long. In the same video, he told of a phone call he received from his missing brother, who told him he'd been abducted and was held under arrest in Petah Tikva. He had also given him the number of the public defense lawyer he'd been appointed; Yousef said the lawyer confirmed his brother had been abducted and smuggled out of Ukraine and brought to Israel. His family has since hired a private attorney, Semadar Ben-Natan. According to reports, she has already met with Abu Sisi in Shikma prison, where he has been transferred.
Israeli officials were not commenting on the topic but a radio report noted that sources were nodding to foreign reports (again) about Abu Sisi being "deeply involved" in Hamas weaponry affairs.
Previously, the Associated Press had quoted a spokesman for the United Nations High Commission for Refugees in Ukraine saying he didn't have the details of just how the engineer had wound up in Israel, "but unfortunately, what happened looks like a violent abduction and not a legal extradition." The U.N. also suspected local security forces had been involved.
Israel and Ukraine have been tightening up ties lately, including a mutual visa waiver and also on security issues. Earlier this month, Ukrainian Premier Nikolai Azarov made his first official visit to Israel and discussed bilateral relations with the press. Asked for his response in case the then-rumors that the engineer had been kidnaped by Israeli intelligence, Azarov responded: "I don't want to imagine that such things are carried out on the soil of a friendly state."
Now there will be a lot of conspiracy theories as to why Abu Sisi was abducted. I am quite positive Israel is trying to pin some kind of weapons charges on this man in order to extract details about the only power plant in Gaza.
You read that right, there is only ONE power plant for all of Gaza, and Abu Sisi is the brains of the operation. The most ironic part of this story is that Abu Sisi had gone to the Ukraine to apply for citizenship, having a wife from there, along with six children and even a degree.
See, Israel wants to take down the power plant on the cheap, like they did in Iran with a high-level computer exploit to render the Gaza City Power Plant inoperative. The man with the knowledge of where to inject the exploit would be one Abu Sisi.
It is not like Israel is above destroying the only power plant for civilians in an occupied territory, an action that gets dangerously close to the "collective punishment" zone.
Gaza invasion: Powered by the U.S.
By Robert Bryce, Salon
In late June 2006, Israeli aircraft fired nine missiles at the transformers at the Gaza City Power Plant, the only electric power plant in the Occupied Territories. (One of the original partners in the project was Enron, but that's another story.) The missiles caused damage estimated at $15 million to $20 million and, for a time, made Gaza wholly reliant on electricity flows from Israel. The 140-megawatt power plant, owned by the Palestine Electric Co., was insured by the Overseas Private Investment Corp., an arm of the U.S. government. Thus the U.S. was providing fuel and materiel to the Israeli military, which destroyed the plant, but it was also paying to fix the damage. Call it cradle-to-grave service.
There you have it folks, we pay for both ends of the fiasco, and having Enron involved in the beginning makes for a nice touch. So now instead of using bombs to render the plant useless, you know, for hospitals and schools and so forth, Israel is seeking a way to bring it down Stuxnet-style.
Israeli Test on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay
By WILLIAM J. BROAD, JOHN MARKOFF and DAVID E. SANGER, NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/...
The Dimona complex in the Negev desert is famous as the heavily guarded heart of Israel’s never-acknowledged nuclear arms program, where neat rows of factories make atomic fuel for the arsenal.
Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own.
Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.
“To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”
Abu Sisi knows the machines.
Mystery solved.
Maybe Israel can wrap this up without destroying the Gaza City Power Plant, which we paid for, with weapons, which we paid for, so we won't have to rebuild it yet again, which we will pay for.
With friends like this...