Politic?

The Sins of the Sons

"I don't know who did it but I'm telling you whoever did it, it's not acceptable. It doesn't matter on Canadian soil or European soil, it's not accepted, not accepted 100%. And I will do my best if I can help and I told already the authorities ... Authorities are aware of all of it and already recorded all these words that I said."
Samir Hajhassan, Burnaby, British Columbia

"Why would somebody who had a future go and jeopardize his life?" That's the rhetorical head-scratcher posed by the father of Hassan Hajhassan, wanted by Bulgarian authorities over his involvement in the Burgas bombing in Bulgaria. Wanted by the Bulgarian Ministry of Interior and the FBI. The FBI is interested in him because of the use of a fake American driver's license. Israel is interested in the proceedings because it lost five of its citizens in the carnage. Along with the Bulgarian bus driver.

Hassan Hajhassan and his colleague, Australian Meliad Farah are wanted for questioning as suspects in that deadly bombing. They're thought to be hiding out in Lebanon. With the turmoil in Lebanon they're perfectly safe; the government of Lebanon would not, in any case, turn them over to Bulgarian authorities. Not for questioning, not to be charged, not for any reason. Since they're reputed to be members of Hezbollah, and that Shia terrorist group is well ensconced in Lebanon, forming part of its government.

Samir Hajhassan comes from a small Palestinian refugee camp, a village in Lebanon. The violence there drove him out, to emigrate to Canada. Sponsored by an older brother who settled in Toronto. Samir lived in Vancouver and started a successful rug business there. It's where his son Hassan came to live with his father and mother for five years before removing back to Lebanon with his mother. At age twelve it's questionable that he might have been attracted to the Hezbollah agenda.

Lebanon gave him his opportunity, no doubt, but there are links to Canada in any event. The Vancouver area was held to be a hub of Hezbollah activity in the late 1990s. Money raised in the United States through fraud and cigarette smuggling by the Party of God was used to procure war materiel in Canada to ship to Lebanon, until Canada and the United States cracked down on the operation. Hezbollah remains present and active in both countries, however and has its share of supporters.

"I know Ali Amhaz", said Samir Hajhassan, of a Hezbollah operative known to Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers who had been monitoring him. "I know the person a long time ago but not now. I'm staying far away from all these kinds of people. We don't want to be associated because it's enough what's happening in the world", he said. Code for being fed up with the violence inflicted by Islamists on Islam and everything else its malice falls upon.

A former U.S. Treasury counter-terrorism official theorizes that Hezbollah and Iran were engaged in a "shadow war", to exact revenge over international pressure on the Republic's nuclear program. Israel would be attacked to deliver a message that would need no other interpretation. Israeli tourists visiting Bulgaria's Black Sea resorts to be the target. To secure a bomb in a backpack within the luggage compartment of a bus carrying the tourists from the airport.

Bulgarian authorities are convinced the assassins' plan went awry. The bomb was meant to be triggered by remote control once it was full of passengers from Tel Aviv and had left the airport. Something had gone awry, the bomb was triggered prematurely before all the Tel Aviv passengers could embark, and before the man attempting to put the bomb in the backpack into the baggage compartment could extract himself, killing him along with the driver and the five Israelis.

Hezbollah, identified as the source of the conspiracy denies anything to do with the atrocity. While Iran characterized the bombing as an Israeli conspiracy. It is known that Hezbollah had wired funding to the suspects before the attack, that the fake IDs were traced to a Hezbollah-linked printer. Lebanon has no intention of co-operating with the investigation.

They will shortly have their hands full negotiating their way out of another civil war, slopping over from Syria, huge compliments of Hezbollah.