Bulgarian President: Accused in terrorist bombing on Israelis to be announced ‘in days’
The names of those to be charged in connection with the July 2012 fatal terrorist bombing attack on a group of Israeli tourists will be announced in days, Bulgaria’s President Rossen Plevneliev said on July 7 2016 after talks in Sofia with his Israeli counterpart, Reuven Rivlin.
In the July 18 2012 attack at Bourgas Airport on Bulgaria’s Black Sea, five Israelis, a Bulgarian and the bearer of the bomb died. More than 30 people were injured.
A Bulgarian-led international investigation established the terrorist attack was plotted by the military wing of Hezbollah, which resulted in the group being declared a terrorist organisation by the European Union.
Plevneliev said that Bulgaria and the State of Israel were acting together and made every effort to ensure that tragedies such as the Bourgas Airport terrorist attack were not repeated.
The terrorist attack was the only one of its kind in Bulgaria’s modern democratic history.
Plevneliev said that the identities of those behind the perpetrators behind the attack were known, and he added that they too would be brought to justice.
The Bulgarian President said that the July 2012 attack had not achieved the goal of its perpetrators because it had no effect on the flow of Israeli tourists to Bulgaria.
“None of us will be at ease until the people who committed the attack as well as those who organised it are brought to court,” Plevneliev said, adding that this would be a fact very soon.
“I have been convinced by the Prosecutor-General that it is a matter of days,” he said.
Prosecutor-General Sotir Tsatsarov said recently that an indictment in connection with the terrorist bombing at Bourgas Airport would be lodged at the Special Criminal Court by July 15.
In 2014, Bulgaria named Lebanese-born Mohammad Hassan El Husseini, alternatively spelt Mohamed Hassan El Husseim, as having been the bearer of the bomb, which went off as the group of Israeli tourists were meant to heading by bus to a popular Bulgarian Black Sea resort.
In 2013, the group involved in the attack was repored to have included Australian citizen Meliad Farah (using a driving licence in the name of Brian Jeremiah Jamison) and Canadian citizen Hassan al-Hajj Hassan (using a driving licence in the name of Ralph William Rico).
Between June 28 and July 18 2012, Farah and Hassan had been observed in the areas of Rousse, Varna and Nessebur, Sunny Beach and Ravda.
Farah and Hassan had studied at the Lebanese International University in Beirut, while El Husseini had been a student there. Investigators established that a printer at the university had been used to manufacture false passports while it was also established that Hezbollah money had been drawn using an ATM in Nessebur.
