Tunisia extradition approved after aerospace engineer and Hamas member killed

ZAGREB: A Croatian court on Wednesday cleared the way for the extradition of a Bosnian man to Tunisia over the alleged murder of an aerospace engineer described by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas as one of its members.
Mohamed Zaouari, 49, was killed in a hail of bullets outside his house in Tunisia's second city Sfax in December 2016.
At a hearing Tuesday, the court said it had "established that legal preconditions for extradition" had been met, a statement said.
The suspect was arrested in Croatia on March 13 on an international warrant and has been held in custody since, said the statement issued by the court in Velika Gorica, near Zagreb.
The ruling is subject to appeal to the country's Supreme Court, a move announced earlier by the suspect's lawyer. The final decision will be made by justice minister.
The arrest was announced earlier this month by Tunisian prosecutors who said they believed that two people with Bosnian passports had carried out the assassination.
They did not give details on the other individual.
Meanwhile Croatian media identified the detained man as Alen Camdzic, 46.
Camdzic served in the police during Bosnia's 1990s war and became a professional soldier after the conflict, media reports said.
Tunisia earlier confirmed that "foreign elements" had been involved in the killing of a Tunisian-Belgian citizen.
Shortly after his death, Hamas said he was a drone expert who had worked for the "resistance" for a decade before being killed by "Zionist treachery".
Israel refuses to respond to such allegations.
Israel has fought several wars with Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and has assassinated several of the Islamist movement's members in the past.
In November 2017, Zaouari's family denounced "silence" on the part of authorities and called on them to provide more details on the investigation into his killing.
Israel was also accused of being behind the assassination last month in Malaysia of Fadi al-Batsh, a Hamas scientist who was said to be a rocket-making expert.
Family and friends of Batsh accused Israel's Mossad spy agency of carrying out the killing in Kuala Lumpur on April 21. — AFP