BEERSHEBA, Israel -- Israeli authorities on Tuesday indicted a captured Palestinian engineer on charges he was a senior Hamas operative and developed longer-range rockets for the Islamic militant group.
The indictment shed new light on Israel's case against Dirar Abu Sisi, a 42-year-old engineer who disappeared from a sleeper train in Ukraine in February and mysteriously resurfaced days later in an Israeli prison.
Israeli officials have said little about the case because of a court gag order, but his family claims he was captured by agents from Israel's Mossad spy agency.
The family says Abu Sisi has no connections to Hamas and that he was in Ukraine, his wife's homeland, to apply for residency. But the indictment said he had received training on rocket technology at a military engineering academy in the eastern European country.
Over the years, Hamas has vastly improved its rocket arsenal, known as Qassams, from primitive weapons with extremely limited ranges into more powerful projectiles that can strike deep inside Israel.
"Abu Sisi's ongoing and significant activities in Hamas' service over the past decade, with an emphasis on strengthening and improving the capabilities of Qassam rockets, allowed Hamas to create a growing threat to the Israeli home front, resulting in the death and wounding of many Israeli civilians," the indictment says.
The indictment made no mention to captured Israeli soldier Gilad Schalit, despite published reports that Israel had seized Abu Sisi to get information on the serviceman. Schalit was captured by Gaza militants nearly five years ago.
During a brief courtroom appearance, Abu Sisi, a senior official at Gaza's sole power plant, professed his innocence and accused Israel of trumping up charges against him.
"I don't have any connection with Schalit and the investigation proved that. And the Ukrainian government should take full responsibility because I was kidnapped from there," he said. "When they found out I don't have any connection to Schalit they fabricated these charges."
After the hearing, Abu Sisi's lawyer, Smadar Ben-Natan, said he denied all charges, calling the indictment "inflated, exaggerated and unconnected to reality."
She also accused Israel of torturing her client and forcing him to sign Hebrew documents he did not understand. "He was under intense pressure," she said, refusing to elaborate.
Israel has said little about Abu Sisi, including how he made his way from Ukraine to an Israeli prison, because of the gag order. Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the engineer was a Hamas member and possessed "important information."
As a senior official at the Gaza plan, Abu Sisi would need good relations with the territory's Iranian-backed Hamas rulers. His family says that does not make him a militant.
