BICOM

Malaysian Police are investigating the shooting of a Palestinian man in Kuala Lumpur on Saturday.

Initial reports said that the assassination of 35-year-old Fadi al-Batsh, a Hamas member, was carried out shortly after 06:00 in the Malaysian capital, where he had been living since 2011. Eyewitnesses said that “white men” pulled up on a large BMW motorcycle, waited for 20 minutes for al-Batsh to arrive at the mosque where he served as the imam, and fired 10 bullets at his head and chest and then fled.

Malaysian police have released composite images of two suspects. The Deputy Prime Minister said the police detectives were looking into the possibility that Western “foreign agents” had been involved or that al-Batsh “became a liability for countries that have friendly relations with Palestine”.

Hamas accused Israel of carrying out the attack on al-Batsh. According to Israeli intelligence sources, reported by Ronen Bergman in Yediot Ahronot, al-Batsh “was sent to Malaysia, apparently by Hamas, to deepen his knowledge in electrical engineering” under the cover of posing as a university lecturer.

“He subsequently served Hamas by making acquisitions of advanced equipment in two main areas: missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles. The acquisitions he made were primarily in the area of electro-optics, which Hamas used,” the intelligence report added.

Hamas has accused Israel of assassinating its experts abroad in the past. A recent case involved the killing of a Tunisian national Mohamed Zouari, who was a member of Hamas’s military wing and was involved in developing “suicide drones” and suicide underwater vessels being developed to attack Israel’s natural gas rigs in the Mediterranean Sea.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett will ask Egypt to refuse the transfer of al-Batsh’s body to Gaza for his burial. The Ministers said this measure is part of efforts to pressure Hamas to return the bodies of two fallen IDF soldiers held since 2014 as well as two Israeli citizens who entered Gaza and are being held captive by Hamas.