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In absentia, the Bulgarian court handed down the harshest sentences for the two assistants of the Sarafovo airport attacker. They are currently sought after by all services in the world. Meliad Farah and Hassan El Haj-Hassan were also ordered to pay record damages by our jurisprudence totaling more than BGN 100 million. The sentences come eight years after the terrorist attack.
The case provided an opportunity to see the full picture of what happened on July 18, 2012. We found an answer to the question of why Hezbollah is considered the organization behind this attack, but also why countries like the United States and Israel have declared this organization as a whole. terrorist, and others like the European Union, for example, declare only the military wing of Hezbollah a terrorist. And one more detail, unknown until now. Part of the explosive was imported into Bulgaria by a Bulgarian-born Lebanese, BNT reports.
Farah and Hassan: sentenced to life imprisonment by a Bulgarian terrorism court. His portraits have been posted on the Interpol website for 8 years, with a high degree of attention, wanted for terrorism. These are the two Lebanese, due to whose negligence the investigators quickly assembled the technology of the attack in Sarafovo.
But no one has ruled out the possibility that they themselves triggered that fatal explosion. They learned that the Israeli tourists did not want to let the attacker leave the backpack in the trunk of the bus and may have decided that their mission was about to fail. And it’s no wonder they sacrificed their accomplice, detonating the bomb much earlier than planned. Because some facts suggest intentions of a more spectacular explosion, near a gas station in traffic jam near Aheloy.
Evgenia Shtarkelova, Prosecutor of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office, Head of the Anti-Terrorist Department: “Each of the people is of Lebanese origin, which gives guidelines on the fact that the intentions of these people were precisely that the victims were Israeli citizens.” The goal was to reach a powerful explosion at some point, which would have these consequences. “
Passengers landing from Tel Aviv at Sarafovo Airport were to be transported to Sunny Beach in three buses parked right in front of the exit.
An hour earlier, the attacker, Mohamed El Husseini, was already in the arrivals hall. He walks nervously and looks at the flight information panel. Security camera footage shows that he had closely monitored the arrival of other groups of Israelis in recent days. He knew how long it took to get on and how to get on the buses.
You are also waiting for the right time on this day. When the first passengers left the border control area and headed for a bus, Husseini joined them and tried to put his backpack in the trunk. Later, one of the witnesses told investigators that he ran into the man: “You are not from our group, you were not on the plane. You are not for this bus.” Seconds later, there was a powerful explosion.
The bus was engulfed in powerful flames, there was a commotion, ambulances began to fly. There is a strong smell of burning oil. The initial assumption was that the fuel system had exploded.
The explosion was probably surprisingly spectacular for the convicted Farah and Hassan, and the reaction of the security services also surprised the murderers of the murderer Husseini – how else do you explain the radio station discarded from the place where they were watching Israeli tourists and the actions of their ally? In literally hours, investigators were able to gather evidence at the scene, which will be key to the investigation.
“The journey of people to Bulgaria, the entry, the logistics that are carried out in the territory of our country with the monitoring of the airport flights, with the surveillance inside the airport, with the acquisition of the improvised explosive device. They are all facts related to these three people, “said Evgenia Shtarkelova.
Kalina Chapkanova, a former district attorney in Burgas, said: “We asked for help from the National Investigation, all available investigators from the District Investigation Department in Burgas were involved in the investigation.”
Another important clue was found near the explosion: a Michigan driver’s license. It turned out that a car had been rented with him and, following these traces, the investigators arrived at a hotel in Ravda. The security cameras give them the images of the three. But to find their true identities, investigators turned to Turkish services.
Through video recognition, the Turkish services established the identity of the attackers and gave information about their movement. In Bulgaria, investigators publish photographs of suspects, to which important witnesses respond. Apart from the hotel owners, a taxi driver from Ruse awards a valuable certificate.
“This gave us the opportunity to gather new evidence and the investigation itself was easier,” Chapkanova said.
Evgenia Shtarkelova, Prosecutor of the Special Prosecutor’s Office, Head of the Anti-Terrorism Department: Her pure monitoring of the movement on the territory of Bulgaria before the terrorist act took place has also led to its establishment. Like here, I must emphasize that this is done exclusively through DNA profiling, as well as the bogus law enforcement books they use.
Farah and Hassan’s driver’s licenses were found in a trash can in Tsar Kaloyan. There, according to the taxi driver’s testimony, the two asked to stop the night after the attack, when they were already leaving Bulgaria. Although they are fake, the books lead to another key clue: Europol finds out in which printer they are printed. It was ordered and delivered to the Al Imam Al-Ouzai University printing base in Lebanon. It was paid for by the company of a Hezbollah leader.
It is established that the three antennae are of Lebanese origin. One has Australian citizenship, the second Canadian, and the third has French explosives. According to the operational data exchanged, Husseini shared a bedroom with a participant in the attacks against “Charlie Hebdo”. Frah and Hassan have a number of family ties to members of Hezbollah.
“This is a series of pieces of evidence that, when analyzed, we conclude that this terrorist organization is involved in the terrorist act. First, it’s the supply of some of the ammonium nitrate that was inside the improvised explosive device. This thing. “The ammonium nitrate arrived in Bulgaria via a road connected to Hezbollah. This is something that was subjected to analysis and evaluation in the experience that was involved in the case and in the judicial proceedings,” Evgenia Shtarkelova said.
The data on the delivery of explosives is still only operational. They were imported by Bulgarian-born Lebanese Balasam-Alexander Hoteit, who also happened to be a member of Hezbollah’s External Security Organization. Hoteit has imported a large quantity of first aid kits into Bulgaria. What’s interesting about them are the cooling bags, which contain 160 grams of ammonium compound used in the explosive mixture. Hoteit left the country a month before the attack.
Dr. Matthew Levitt, Hezbollah analyst, Institute for Middle East Policy in Washington: “There is interesting information about the movement patterns of the Burgas bombers and their other actions. Some of them are not related to Hezbollah, some are related to the United States. arrested a woman who is a senior logistics official in Hezbollah. She does not realize she is talking to an undercover agent. She thinks she is talking to a representative of US organized crime. That is why she boasts that she can launder money in Europe ., to transport drugs, weapons. Among the many places in Europe that she cites as a place where Hezbollah can do it is Bulgaria. “
The interactive map of Hezbollah activities around the world was prepared by the Middle East Policy Institute in Washington. Hotspots in Bulgaria and the Balkans are also marked on it.
Yordan Bozhilov, President of the Sofia Security Forum, analyst at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences: “Terrorists are citizens of different countries. Support for terrorist activities naturally depends on the people residing in the country itself. It is interesting for I establish this connection between This is something that, of course, the Bulgarian court could not and was not obliged to investigate, but it is an analysis of specialized services and of the interaction between Bulgarian, American, European and Israeli specialized services will provide even more information on these links. “
Just one day after the attack, Israel held Hezbollah responsible. Bulgaria accepted this thesis six months later.
“By the way, the EU made a decision in 2013 to include Hezbollah in the list of terrorist organizations, after Burgas, but then there was another interrupted terrorist attack again against Israeli tourists in Cyprus,” Bozhilov said.
Unlike Israel and the United States, the European Union declares that only the military wing of Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. The reason: the political is involved in the government of Lebanon, and Europe in the last 10 years has invested more than 2.5 billion euros in the Middle East. However, according to analysis, through corrupt deals much of this money went to finance the group’s military wing.
“There are many forms of financing. It is estimated that Iran gives about 700 million dollars a year. But most of it comes from donations. -Donations are from Shiite organizations. They are from individuals and especially from Lebanese. Lebanese companies and donations for certain activities carried out by Hezbollah, Yordan Bozhilov said.
Farah and Hassan were sentenced in absentia and paid more than BGN 100 million in damages to more than 40 wounded and the families of the six killed in the attack. But the sentence can only be carried out if they are detained in a country that would hand them over to our authorities to serve their sentences. The probability of this happening seems extremely small.
Burgas, Bulgaria
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