29-Apr-15: Iran's terrorists-by-proxy: getting on with what they do - in quiet neighbourhoods near you

Yes, still wanted [Image Source]

Some of the killers of a bus-load of Israeli tourists bombed at a Burgas airport in Bulgaria in 2012 are still free.

If Burgas has slipped off your radar, here's a reminder of two reports we posted at the time: "20-Jul-12: US says Hezbullah and its primary sponsor Iran executed the Burgas, Bulgaria, killings" and "21-Jul-12: How involved in terror against Israelis and Jews are the Iranians?"

Authorities in the US announced on Tuesday that three Hezbollah agents, two of them accused of being behind the murderous attack on Israelis in Bulgaria, have just been put onto an official terror watch list [source: Hezbollah suspects placed on special US terror list | AFP | April 29, 2015]

The State Department named Meliad Farah, Hassan el-Hajj Hassan and Hussein Atris as "specially designated global terrorists." The terror designation makes it illegal for US citizens to engage in any transactions with the three men, and freezes any property they might possess within the United States. All three men are Lebanese by birth, but Farah was identified as an Australian national, while Hassan el-Hajj Hassan is Canadian. Meliad Farah and Hassan el-Hajj Hassan were placed on the list for their alleged role in the July 2012 suicide attack on a bus at the airport in Burgas, Bulgaria that killed six people, including five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian citizen. Hussein Atris, who the State Department said has Swedish nationality, was identified as a member of Hezbollah's overseas terrorism unit. He was arrested in 2012 in Thailand as a suspect in a plot to carry out a bombing in Bangkok and was sentenced by a Thai court to two years and eight months in prison for possessing illegally possessing explosives. He was released in September 2014, and is believed, like the other two men, to currently be in Lebanon. Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah, which is backed financially and politically by Iran, is considered a terrorist organization by the United States.

The formal State Department announcement is online here.

Many people may mentally dismiss the dangers posed by terrorists, like these, who spend their days and nights in far-off non-threatening Lebanon. Keep away from Lebanon, we figure, and everything's cool. But it is not entirely like that. What might not be fully appreciated is that when they are not plotting, planning and re-equipping in that lawless viper's nest of Islamist bombers and other terrorist thugs, these people - as the AFP report points out - move freely in their second homes: Australia, Canada, Sweden.

A Sydney Morning Herald report ["Australian Meliad Farah will be tried for Israeli tourist bus bombing in Bulgaria", September 13, 2013] suggested a little misleadingly that the suspected killer named as Meliad Farah was going to be indicted and tried real soon. But in reality, the 32-year-old better known in Australia (where he holds citizenship and - contrary to the FBI statement - where he was born) as Hussein Hussein, has not actually been arrested. Yet.

The other murder-by-terrorism fugitive, Hassan el-Hajj Hassan, lived in Canada from the time he was eight years old [source]. Chances are he looks and seems more like an ordinary resident of Winnipeg than a Middle Easterner.

Speaking of terrorists: Mohammad Khazaee, Iran's
ambassador to the United Nations, [Image Source]

How much simpler life would be if jihadis and Islamism-fuelled killers had posters glued to their foreheads saying who they are and what they plan to do. Unfortunately figuring out who they are and when and where they next intend to attack unsuspecting victims can be a serious and complicated challenge.

As for connecting them with the government of Iran's burgeoning terrorism wing, the Iranians themselves say that's unfair. No less a personage than Iran’s Ambassador to the United Nations His Excellency Mr Mohammad Khazaee said it was Israel, not his own country. that actually carried out the Burgas airport bus bombing attack. How so? Because of this compelling argument:

"Such [a] terrorist operation could only be planned and carried out by the same regime whose short history is full of state terrorism operations and assassinations aimed at implicating others for narrow political gains..." [Telegraph UK, July 26, 2012]

The Iranian added for good measure that there were many examples of when Israel had killed "its own citizens or innocent Jewish people in order to blame others", and said it was "suspicious" that Israel had accused Iran of masterminding the bombing so soon after the attack.

There are some additional insights into this charming man's approach to diplomacy in a revealing February 2013 article on the Forbes Magazine site: "Meet Iran's Ambassador to the UN":

With his neat mustache and well-cut jackets, Khazaee looks like the very model of an earnest diplomat... Khazaee is one of the Iranian ambassadors described in the complaint as having directed the activities of the Alavi Foundation, starting soon after his 2007 arrival as Iran’s envoy to the U.N. in New York... Protected by diplomatic immunity, he remains an urbane presence at the U.N., with access to Manhattan, making connections, peddling propaganda, turning up last year on TV’s Charlie Rose talk show... If Khazaee, with his mannered inflections and his buttoned vest, appears worlds removed from Iran’s goose-stepping Revolutionary Guards, or Iran’s boorish President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (threatening in his lounge suit to wipe Israel off the map), that’s because Khazaee’s job is to cover for them on the diplomatic stage. [Forbes]

We happen to have written in the past about the Alavi Foundation that's mentioned in the Forbes quote. See "18-Sep-13: Striking back at the money that enables the terrorists" and "19-Apr-14: One small step for civilized society; one substantial leap in the fight against the terrorists"

A small measure of how insane some aspects of international relations have become in this terrorism-rich age: Khazaee - who on 14 September 2011 publicly accused Obama and the US of deploying "nuclear blackmail against a non-nuclear-weapon state", namely his country, Iran - was elected Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly.

9-Feb-13: Hezbollah and Europe: Decisions need to be made as if people's lives were on the line

Since our principal focus here is terrorism and what it is doing to the lives of people like us, it's natural that we deal regularly with the ongoing dangers posed by one of the meanest, best equipped and demonstrably committed terror armies in the Islamist firmament: Hezbollah. 

Just a few days ago, we posted here [see "5-Feb-13: Now that the Bulgarians have fingered Hezbollah, what happens next in Europe?"] about how things look now that the murderous Hezbollah attack on Israelis in a Bulgarian seaside town has been investigated and the key culprits identified. And we pointed out how the European role is central to what gets done next.

We have just now seen an editorial that ran in the Washington Post on the same day as our blog post. We are reprinting the whole text below in the hope of contributing to understanding of why the conduct of the EU leadership - and especially that of the political heads of France and Germany - ought to be criticized and changed in how they deal with Hezbollah and its activities on the continent.

European Union must respond to Hezbollah’s attack in Bulgaria

Washington Post Editorial Board,February 05, 2013 

ON TUESDAY the Bulgarian government confirmed what most of the world has known for months: The bombing of a bus carrying Israeli tourists in the Black Sea resort of Burgas last July 18 was carried out by members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah organization. The results of an official investigation present leaders of the European Union with a reality that will be difficult to ignore. They must decide whether to allow a terrorist attack on E.U. territory to go unpunished or to sanction a movement that is both an Iranian proxy and the dominant party in the Lebanese government. 

The case for sanctions is a strong one. The Burgas attack, which killed five Israelis and wounded more than 100, was not an isolated incident but part of a campaign of terrorism against Israeli, U.S. and gulf state targets by Hezbollah and the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps. According to a new report by Matthew Levitt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the two groups decided in January 2010 to launch a campaign of violence aimed at punishing Israel for the assassination of Iranian scientists and deterring an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. 

Since then the Quds Force has, among other things, plotted to kill the Saudi ambassador to the United States in Washington and the U.S. ambassador to Azerbaijan, and it has attacked an Israeli diplomat’s wife in India. Hezbollah has attempted attacks on Israeli tourists in Cyprus, Greece and Thailand as well as in Bulgaria. Mr. Levitt says that more than 20 terror attacks by Hezbollah or the Iranian force were detected between May 2011 and July 2012; fortunately, almost all failed or were disrupted. 

Israel participates in this shadow war, too: Five Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years. The United States has sponsored cyberattacks on Iranian nuclear facilities. But nothing justifies Hezbollah’s attempts to murder tourists; one of those killed in Bulgaria was a pregnant woman. Nor should a democratic community such as the European Union tolerate terrorist attacks on its territory by an established organization such as Hezbollah, which seeks recognition as a legitimate political movement worthy of governing Lebanon. 

The United States, which long ago designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, has been pressing European leaders to do the same so that the group’s funds in European banks and other financial assets can be targeted. Several governments, led by France, have resisted; they worry that sanctions could further destabilize Lebanon or subject European peacekeepers in the south of that country to reprisals. Bulgaria’s findings should end the debate. Inaction would mean accepting that Europe can be a free-fire zone for Iran and its proxies.

Meanwhile, a Herb Keinon article in the Jerusalem Post ["Hezbollah will gain immunity without EU blacklist"] quotes an Israeli official who points out that current European policy on the Hezbullah terrorists amounts to providing them with a free pass:

'Europe needs to decide whether it will allow itself to be attacked with impunity', an Israeli diplomatic official said on Wednesday, explaining the argument Israeli representatives will now use to get the EU to place Hezbollah on its terrorist blacklist. Since it is clear Bulgaria is not going to respond to Hezbollah attacks on its soil by bombing training bases in Lebanon, according to this argument, if there is no strong European diplomatic reaction, then Hezbollah will essentially have immunity.