Hezbollah tied to Bulgaria blast

Terror cell blew up bus, killing 5 Israelis last year, investigators say

— Hezbollah was behind a bus attack that killed five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last year, investigators said Tuesday, describing a sophisticated bombing carried out by a terrorist cell that included a Canadian and an Australian.

The first major announcement in the investigation carried broad diplomatic implications, as countries that consider the Shiite militant group to be a terrorist organization called on Europe - which has resisted such a move - to crack down on the group.

Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said two of the suspects had been living in Lebanon for years - one with a Canadian passport and the other with an Australian one. He said investigators had traced their activities back to their home countries.

“We have well-grounded reasons to suggest that the two were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah,” Tsvetanov said after a meeting of Bulgaria’s National Security Council.

A third suspect entered Bulgaria with them on June 28, he said, without giving details.

Within hours, Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemned the attack andsaid his country would cooperate fully.

Hezbollah, a Shiite militant group and political party in Lebanon that emerged in response to Israel’s 1982 invasion, has been linked to attacks and kidnappings on Israeli and Jewish interests around the world.

The group has denied involvement in the Bulgaria bombing, and Hezbollah officials in Beirut declined to comment further Tuesday. They customarily defer to Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah to comment on security matters.

The bomb exploded as the Israeli tourists made their way from the airport to their hotel in the Black Sea resort of Burgas. The blast also killed the Bulgarian driver and the suspected bomber, a tall and lanky pale-skinned man wearing a baseball cap and dressed like a tourist.

Although it was initially believed to be a suicide bombing, Europol Director Rob Wainwright said investigators now believe that the bomber never intended to die. He said a Europol expert who analyzed a fragment of a circuit board determined that the bomb was detonated remotely.

The investigators found no links to Iran, which Israel had accused of playing a role in the attack.

The findings increased pressure on Europe to declare Hezbollah to be a terrorist organization, as the United States and Canada do.

“The attack in Burgas was an attack on European land against a member of the European Union,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. “We hope the Europeans learn the proper conclusions from this about the true character of Hezbollah.”

Analysts said they did not expect Israel to retaliate now that Bulgaria has named Hezbollah.

“When Israel acts, it is in order to prevent a security threat, to prevent a concrete attack. It is not in order to punish,” said Israeli counter terrorism expert Boaz Ganor.

U.S. counter terrorism adviser John Brennan, who is President Barack Obama’s nominee to run the CIA, said Europe should seek to uncover Hezbollah’s infrastructure and disrupt the group’s finances and operational network.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird went further.

“We urge the European Union and all partners who have not already done so to list Hezbollah as a terrorist entity and prosecute terrorist acts committed by this inhumane organization to the fullest possible extent,” he said.

Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s top foreignand security official, said the EU needs to assess the implications of the investigation seriously but stressed that any decision on adding Hezbollah to the EU list of terrorist organizations would require a unanimous decision by the foreign ministers of the 27 EU countries. Their next scheduled meeting is Feb. 18.

France and Germany, wary of coming under pressure to condemn the group, had urged investigators not to publicly name Hezbollah in the bombing, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

Wainwright - whose organization helps coordinate national police across the EU, which includes Bulgaria - said in an interview that counterfeit U.S. driver’s licenses that were found near the bombing scene were made in Lebanon. Tsvetanov, the Bulgarian interior minister, said the fake licenses were from Michigan.

The investigators, he said, found no direct links to Iran or to any al-Qaida-affiliated terror group.

Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Lee, Josef Federman, Bassem Mroue Zeina Karam, Don Melvin, Rob Gillies and Tia Goldenberg of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 02/06/2013

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