Al-Qaeda emerges as Bulgaria bomb
suspect By Kaveh Afrasiabi
As the Israeli government seizes on last
week's suicide bombing of a bus carrying Israeli
tourists in Bulgaria as an opportunity to
discredit Iran and Hezbollah, the on-going
investigation in Bulgaria is increasingly pointing
the finger at a different culprit - al-Qaeda.
As reported in Lebanese media, an al-Qaeda
cell has taken responsibility for the suicide
bombing that took the lives of five Israeli
vacationers, as well as a bus driver and a suicide
bomber. [1] This has been corroborated by
Bulgarian media reports that focus on two
individuals, an American and a former Guantanamo
inmate from Sweden with ties to al-Qaeda.
Although the DNA evidence is still under
investigation, on Thursday when Bulgarian media
began identifying the suspected suicide bomber as
Mehdi Ghezali, US officials quickly rejected
this and insisted that
"there was no evidence" linking him with the bomb.
The same "anonymous" US officials simultaneously
told the New York Times that this was a
"tit-for-tat" Hezbollah job launched by Iran in
revenge for Israel killing Iranian nuclear
scientists.
Emboldened by the US
government's endorsement of his allegations
against Hezbollah, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu wasted no time in appealing to the
European Union to add Hezbollah to its list of
terrorist organizations, while vowing massive
retaliation for the attack.
Citing Iran's
"global terror campaign against Israel," Netanyahu
and other Israeli leaders have insisted there is
"rock solid" evidence linking Iran and Hezbollah
to the bus attack, despite Bulgarian officials
finding no conclusive evidence of such a link.
Netanyahu's comparison of this bus attack
and bombings aimed at the Israeli interests,
elsewhere, such as in India, is contradicted by
the fact that the suicide bombing method used in
this instance is markedly different to the "sticky
bombs" used on cars in previous attacks.
Israel has no dearth of enemies -
Palestinians and even Turkey's Kurdish insurgents
are unhappy with Israel's cooperation with Ankara
in the latter's counterinsurgency efforts. But
above all there is al-Qaeda, which has been
resurrecting itself in the volatile Arab world.
Troubling questions At this
point, much depends on the objectivity of the
investigation by Bulgaria. However, the country's
police failed to conduct extensive interviews of
Israeli witnesses before they were rushed out of
the country by the Israeli Defense Force. The IDF
also quickly sent bodies back home before
Bulgarian authorities had any chance to conduct an
autopsy.
Bulgarian police also shouldn't
have allowed the Israeli emergency workers to
approach the scene of crime and collect bodies, as
the various photos displayed in the Israeli media
clearly show.
Close scrutiny of those
photos reveals that two white buses were badly
damaged by the bombing, one had broken windows and
was relatively intact while the main target bus
was completely gutted by the explosion and fire.
Somehow, the photos of victims from the
adjacent bus surprisingly show almost no sign of
serious injuries: several are shown walking or on
stretchers, some with only bandaged hands or feet,
likely attributable to their attempt to jump down
the broken windows. [2]
Given the sharp
contrast between the image of inferno in the main
bus [3] and the light injuries suffered by the
majority of passengers, it is only logical to
conclude that the 30 or so wounded were from the
other bus, thus raising the question of what
happened to the passengers of the main bus, given
related reports that say some 172 Israelis had
just landed and were taking three to four buses?
Is it possible that we are dealing with
explosion at an empty bus that merely impacted the
adjacent bus, particularly since the photos do not
show any evidence of piled luggage at or near the
main bus? This is a question of pure mathematics,
in the light of "32 wounded" reported by the
Bulgarian police. How did, then, five Israelis end
up dead, along with the bus diver?
There
are, unfortunately, other troubling questions
raised as well, such as how some Israeli
passengers ended up telling Israeli media that
those who were killed were sitting in the back of
the bus, while the driver at the front was killed
by the explosion?
While awaiting the
result of further investigation in Bulgaria, it
seems clear that there is no way so many
passengers would escape with little or no injuries
- with many rushing to the airport "without
clothes and shoes" - if they were from the same
bus that was exploded and then filled with smoke
and fire.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is
the author of After Khomeini: New Directions
in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) . For
his Wikipedia entry, click here.
He is author of Reading
In Iran Foreign Policy After September 11
(BookSurge Publishing , October 23, 2008) and his
latest book, Looking
for rights at Harvard, is now available.
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