MYSTERY SURROUNDS the fate of a senior Palestinian engineer whose family says he was abducted by Mossad agents on a Ukrainian night-train and is now being held in an Israeli jail.

Dirar Abu Sisi, a manager at the main power station in the Gaza Strip, vanished from the train between Kharkiv and Kiev on the night of February 18th-19th, as he travelled to the Ukrainian capital to meet his brother at the airport.

The missing man’s sister, Susan Abu Sisi, said he had gone to Ukraine to apply for citizenship. His wife, Veronika, is Ukrainian and they have six children.

“Friends there told us Dirar had been seized by six people who had abducted him from the train en route between Kharkiv and Kiev,” Ms Abu Sisi said.

“We know now that he is in prison in Israel, so they were the ones who abducted him. We do not know why they did it.”

His wife denied suggestions that he had links with Hamas, and insisted that he had been seized by the Israeli secret service, Mossad.

“I don’t suspect it, I am sure of it,” she said. “My husband was the heart of the only electric station in Gaza, or rather its brain. It’s a strategic object and they wanted to disable it.”

Israeli officials and a lawyer appointed to represent Mr Abu Sisi said a court-issued gag order prevented them from commenting on the case.

Israeli human rights group HaKomed said Mr Abu Sisi has been held in jail by the Israeli special services since February 19th.

“We don’t know details of his trip from Ukraine to Israel – let’s put it this way.

“But unfortunately, what happened looks like a violent abduction and not a legal extradition or any other legal action on the part of authorities,” said Maksim Butkevych, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Ukraine.

“We don’t know what happened on the ground. But we have serious concerns. It is a very serious issue for us,” he added.

Mr Butkevych, Mr Abu Sisi’s family and Hamas have demanded that Ukraine take urgent action to discover what happened to the missing engineer.

Ukrainian prime minister Mykola Azarov visited Israel this week but said he had “no clear information” on the case.