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Europe

Bulgarian court hands down life imprisonment for Hezbollah terrorists

2020-09-21

[JPost] The conviction leaves the families of the victims and Israel partially unsatisfied because Hezbollah itself was not formally indicted or convicted.

Two Hezbollah operatives were sentenced in absentia to life in prison on Monday by a Bulgarian court for blowing up a bus in 2012 in Burgas, Bulgaria, killing five Israeli and their Bulgarian-Muslim bus driver.

They would be Lebanese-Australian Meliad Farah and Lebanese-Canadian Hassan El Hajj Hassan. The man who planted the bomb, Franco-Lebanese Mohamad Hassan El-Husseini, was killed when it exploded.

The sentence may bring to an end a terror saga which shook Europe to its foundations for its audacity, but leaves the families of the victims and Israel partially unsatisfied because Hezbollah itself was not formally indicted or convicted.

At a July 2019 anniversary ceremony for the victims, their families had demanded that Hezbollah itself be charged for terror in the Bulgarian trial.

In his speech, Kobi Price, one of the family members, noted that, "three years ago... four years after the attack, the criminal trial opened... In the indictment... only two attackers" were charged.

"We the mourning families ask the Government of Bulgaria to rise above narrow political considerations and to add the terror organization Hezbollah to the indictment without delay," said Price.

Price continued, "Without Hezbollah, there is no morality in the trial. Without Hezbollah, the trial is ineffective. Without Hezbollah, there is no justice for the murdered victims."

In January 2018, The Jerusalem Post exclusively disclosed that the Bulgarian state prosecution had decided not to charge Hezbollah as an organization with involvement in the 2012 bomb attack at the Burgas airport.

Instead, the prosecutor indicted the two men allegedly involved in the attack as if they were terrorists or even regular criminals who acted without connection to an organization. The word "Hezbollah" does not appear in the indictment.

Posted by:Frank G

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