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 on Wenesday.
Al-Sulaiti added that one of the two individuals was arrested in Croatia on March 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.
“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 December 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.
