Evidence Unravelled

"The Burgas bombers were maintaining part of Hezbollah's structures in Canada and Australia and had contacts with other representatives of this organization."
"There is data showing the financing and connection between Hezbollah and the two suspects . . . What can be established as a well-grounded assumption is that the two persons whose real identity has been determined belonged to the military wing of Hezbollah."
Tsvetan Tsvetanov former Interior Minister, Bulgaria

Lest any doubt the evidence that distinguishes the terrorist credentials of Hezbollah, the non-state militia that is a creature of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the statistics are all there for observation. It is a non-state militia because it is answerable only to Iran, although it is a political-ideological entity that exists within Lebanon, integrated into its government at the political level, and maintaining its military separate and apart from that of the nation, having refused to meld its military with that of the Lebanese government.

It is far better armed and trained than the Lebanese military, and remains a force to be reckoned with, one that the Lebanese government treads lightly with. To its past credit goes planned attacks in Thailand, Kenya, Turkey, India, Azerbaijan, Cyprus and Georgia. Its list of atrocities include the 1983 barracks bombing that killed 241 American marines and 58 French paratroopers in Beirut. There were bombings in Paris in 1985 and 1986 killing 13; the 1985 hijacking of TWA flight 847 in Greece, and a 1984 Spanish bomb blast that killed 18.

And then there is its attack on the Israeli embassy in Buenes Aires in 1992, where 29 were killed, and the later 1994 bombing of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association in Buenos Aires where 85 people lost their lives.  But Hezbollah has been extremely busy latterly in Syria, where its Shia jihadists have been dispatched by their leader to fight alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in his bloody crack-down on Sunni Syrians who have dared demand equality, and finally his departure from Syria.

Just Hezbollah doing its part for the greater glory of fanatical Islamism. Bulgarian authorities now believe that the Hezbollah operative with Canadian citizenship, along with his partner in the deadly bomb attack on Israeli tourists travelling to the Burgas Black Sea resort may have sought refuge not in Lebanon among the Shia Hezbollah whose interests they represent, but in another terrorist enclave held by Sunni fanatics in Gaza, among Hamas.

Australia has not yet declared Hezbollah a terrorist group, nor listed them as such, though they may be on track to do just that. Meliad Farah, 32, one of the Burgas bombers is an Australian citizen. Recruited along with the Canadian citizenship holder Hasan El Hajj Hassan when they were both studying engineering at the Lebanese International University. Canada, on the other hand, does list Hezbollah on its terror list. Yet funding from Hezbollah filtered through to Australia and Canada to enable the two men to carry out their Burgas bombing mission.

Authorities in Bulgaria believe their plan was for the bus to blow up en route to the Black Sea hotel with the use of a remote detonator, having a 10-km control range. They feel that the Hezbollah agent planting the bomb hidden in a backpack among the luggage, had been somehow unnerved -- resulting in his accomplices who fled to safety while he blew up -- detonating the bomb prematurely.

DNA recovered leads investigators to the theory that the man who was blown up planting the bomb was related to Hassan El Hajj Hassan. The pity of it all was that the premature detonation did not take place before the Israeli passengers embarked on the bus, killing five of them along with the Bulgarian bus driver.