Ali H. M.Abo Rezeg
21 December 2016•Update: 21 December 2016
TUNIS
An investigating judge has ordered three suspects -- including one woman -- to remain in police custody on suspicions of involvement in last week’s murder in Tunisia of a Hamas-linked drone expert.
Seven other suspects in the same case were released, Sufian al-Saliti, a spokesman for Tunisia’s Court of First Instance, told the country’s official news agency Wednesday.
The ten were arrested shortly after the murder of Mohamed al-Zawari, a Tunisian aviation engineer who was shot dead last Thursday outside his home in Tunisia’s southeastern city of Sfax.
The suspects were accused of murder and "conspiring to commit acts of aggression" against Tunisia’s national security.
Interior Minister Hedi Medjoub said al-Zawari’s killing was planned by two foreign nationals living in two European countries.
Palestinian resistance group Hamas has blamed Israel for al-Zawari’s death, saying the slain engineer had overseen the group’s drone program.
Hamas has not offered any evidence for the claim, but the Jewish state is widely believed to have killed numerous Palestinian resistance activists in the past, many of them overseas.
In 1997, agents from Israeli spy agency Mossad tried -- and failed -- to kill Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal in Jordan by spraying poison into his ear.
Mossad is also believed to have been behind the assassination in 2010 of top Hamas commander Mahmud al-Mabhuh in a Dubai hotel.
Israel has never confirmed or denied its involvement in Mabhuh’s murder.
*Reporting by Yosra Ouanes; Writing by Ali Abo Rezeg
