Aviation engineer’s killers nabbed in Croatia: Tunisia

By Yosra Ouanes

TUNIS (AA) - Tunisian officials on Wednesday announced that two suspected perpetrators of the 2016 assassination of Mohamed Zouari, a Hamas-linked Tunisian aviation engineer, had been identified.

“The two individuals who assassinated Zouari are both Bosnian nationals,” Sufian al-Sulaiti, a spokesman for Tunisia’s counter-terrorism apparatus, said at a press conference held in capital Tunis.

Al-Sulaiti added that one of the two individuals had been arrested in Croatia on Mar. 13. He did not say whether the second individual had been detained.

According to the spokesman, the Tunisian judiciary sent several judicial referrals regarding the assassination to officials in Egypt, Lebanon, Cuba, Turkey, Belgium, Sweden and Bosnia.

A judicial referral is an official request to a court in another country for judicial assistance.

“We have been surprised to find, however, that the Bosnian authorities are refusing to hand over the arrested individual to Tunisia,” al-Sulaiti said without elaborating.

On Dec. 15, 2016, Zouari was killed by gunmen -- who later managed to flee the scene -- outside his home in Tunisia’s southern city of Sfax.

Palestinian resistance movement Hamas quickly accused Israel of assassinating Zouari, who, it later emerged, had been a member of the Ezzeddine al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing.

Last November, Hamas accused Israel's Mossad intelligence agency -- in cooperation with other “unidentified parties” -- of responsibility for the assassination.