Tunisian Court Issues Life Sentences Against 11 Defendants for Assassinating Aviation Engineer Zouari

Tunisia/ Marwa Al-Sahili/ Anadolu

A Tunisian court issued life sentences on Tuesday against the 11 defendants accused of assassinating Mohamed Zouari, the Tunisian aviation engineer and member of the "Al-Qassam Brigades," the military wing of the "Hamas" movement.

This came according to what was announced by defense committee member Mokhtar Al-Jamali on his Facebook page on Tuesday evening, following a session in the criminal court specialized in terrorism cases at the Tunis Court of First Instance.

Al-Jamali said that the court issued "life sentences (life imprisonment) against defendants, none of whom attended, and all of them are fugitives."

The 11 defendants were tried on charges of premeditated murder of Mohamed Zouari.

According to Tunisian authorities earlier, the defendants are Eric Sarac and Alan Kamzic, the perpetrators who hold Bosnian citizenship, in addition to 6 other foreigners and 3 Tunisians.

Zouari was 49 years old when he was assassinated on December 15, 2016, in front of his home in the city of Sfax in southern Tunisia, while he was preparing to get into his car.

The perpetrators fired 20 bullets at Zouari, who was working at the time on a project to obtain a doctorate degree on building a drone submarine.

Following his assassination, the "Hamas" movement announced Zouari's affiliation with its military wing "Al-Qassam Brigades," and his supervision of a project to develop drones named "Ababil 1."

The movement accused the Israeli foreign intelligence agency (Mossad) of assassinating him, and Tel Aviv usually remains silent on the many assassinations it commits.