HOW MOSSAD ASSASSINS KILLED HAMAS DRONE CHIEF IN TUNISIA Brutal Murder
On December 15, 2016, a man got into his car outside his home in the suburbs of Sfax, Tunisia and was just about to drive away, when a truck drove up and blocked the way.
Two shooters opened fire with silenced firearms, firing about twenty shots. The victim was mortally wounded, as three bullet hits to the chest turned out to be fatal.
The victim’s wife was in the house at the time of the murder.
“At approximately 1:50 we heard gunshots. I got out the door and started to run, I thought at first it was a gas explosion. But when I ran outside, I saw my husband’s car smashed in from the back. I ran around to the other side of the car, and I found my husband. I called out to my husband, calling him by his other name ‘Murad.’ I said ‘Murad, answer me!’ I put my hand on his heart and his clothes were full of blood. His phone fell into my hand. The bullet hit his heart. It was one bullet to the heart and another to the throat,” she recounted.
Tunisian authorities discovered four rental cars, two handguns and silencers at the scene of the murder, the interior ministry said.
The victim was The Tunisian engineer and drone expert Mohammad Zouari who had been secretly working for Hamas for many years as its drone chief. The engineer had been trained in Syria and Iran.
Tunisian radio station Shams FM, which also reported the Hamas operative’s death, reported that the security camera around his house in Sfax were disabled shortly before his death and that footage at the house was tampered with.
According to the report, during the time of the alleged assassination, the security cameras showed footage from different cameras in a different part of the city.
Other reports detailed that after the assassination, the surveillance system of a restaurant near the place of the assassination had its video recordings erased by an unknown external party.
Investigators said that those behind the assassination had a vast technical background, and were very professional in what they did.
The killing of the Tunisian drone specialist with ties to the militant Palestinian movement Hamas jolted the small North African country at a time when it seemed headed towards increased calm and stability.
The Tunisian Interior Ministry said eight Tunisian citizens have been arrested in connection with the December 15th killing of Mohamed, who was shot multiple times in his car near his house in the coastal town of Sfax.
The ministry said the victim’s ties to Hamas were previously unknown and that its investigation indicated suspected foreigners had been tracking him since June when they set up a media company as a cover to shadow his whereabouts.
Hamas’s armed wing, the Qassam Brigades, said in an online statement that Zouari had been a member of the group for ten years and had been supervising its drone programme.
“Qassam Brigades mourns the martyr of Palestine, martyr of the Arab and Muslim nation, the Qassam leader, engineer and pilot Mohamed Zouari, who was assassinated by treacherous Zionist hands,” a statement posted on the group’s website said.
Tunisian Interior Minister Hedi Majdoub said during a news conference in Tunis that Zouari had returned to Tunisia after the 2011 uprising that overthrew anti-Islamist president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali to set up an avionics association to manufacture unmanned aerial vehicles.
“Tunisian security services had no information about his links to Hamas or other groups while he was abroad and when he returned to Tunisia,” Majdoub said.
Zouari had left Tunisia early in the 1990s to escape arrest when he was a leading student figure in the then-illegal Islamist Ennahda party, whose leaders had been accused of plotting to overthrow the government.
After leaving Tunisia, Zouari lived in Libya and Sudan before settling in Syria where he studied engineering at an aviation academy.
After his return to Tunisia, he travelled to Libya, Sudan, Lebanon and Turkey where he kept a business connection with a technology company, Majdoub said.
The Tunisian engineer was allegedly working on building remote-controlled submarines for the Islamic terror group Hamas before he was killed, his brother Radwan al-Zawahri claimed in an interview with Al-Jazeera.
Radwan said that his brother was working on a doctorate in engineering and was in the process of designing a submarine that could be steered remotely.
“He was very quiet about it,” Radwan said. “I was able to get him to tell me a little about it, but he wouldn’t tell me much.” Following the assassination of the drone engineer, Tunis television filmed his laboratory.
In the video, a prototype of an autonomous submersible weapon could be seen.
His wife denied knowledge of the husband’s connection to armed groups in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria, saying “My husband was very quiet. Even if we were sitting together for an hour or two, he would barely utter a word. He was very quiet.
“Hamas confirmed Mohamed Zouari’s membership of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades and the role he played in the development of the Ababil drone in a statement released on its website on December 17, 2016.
It also accused Israel of being behind the assassination and promised to avenge Zouari.The Tunisian Government announced that it will prosecute, both nationally and abroad, any person involved in Zouari’s assassination.
Asked about the assassination, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said that Israel would continue to defend its interests.
