ABC News claims government sources say bomber’s identity still not public
Mehdi Ghezali (screen capture, Channel 10)
America’s ABC News on Thursday
reported that Bulgarian officials denied Bulgarian news reports that the
Burgas bomber was identified as Mehdi Ghezali. The Atlantic Wire also reported Swedish officials issuing a similar denial.
Earlier on Thursday Bulgarian media had named
the suicide bomber who blew up a bus full of Israeli tourists, killing
five Israelis and a local bus driver, in the Black Sea resort of Burgas
on Wednesday as 36-year-old Ghezali.
The bomber reportedly arrived in Bulgaria five
days before the bombing and arrived at the airport via taxi, Channel 2
reported. He was also reportedly given the bomb by someone else, but no
further details were provided.
There was no independent confirmation of
Ghezali’s identity, which surfaced in Bulgarian media reports on
Thursday afternoon. The reports emerged soon after Israel’s Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had publicly accused Hezbollah, directed by
Iran, of responsibility for the bombing. The Prime Minister’s Office
made no comment on the reports.
The Bulgarian reports, rapidly picked up by
Hebrew media, posited various versions of how the bomber had detonated
the bomb, including the suggestion that the bomber had not intended to
die in the blast, but may have wanted to place the bomb on the bus and
flee.
Ghezali has a Wikipedia page, which describes him as a Swedish citizen, with Algerian and Finnish origins.
He was held at the US’s Guantanamo Bay detainment camp on Cuba from
2002 to 2004, having previously studied at a Muslim religious school and
mosque in Britain, and traveled to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and
Pakistan, it says. He was taken into custody on suspicion of being an
al-Qaeda agent, having been arrested along with a number of other
al-Qaeda operatives.
Following a lobbying effort by Swedish prime minister Göran Persson, Guantanamo authorities recommended Ghezali be transferred to another country for continued detainment, and he was handed over to Swedish authorities in 2004. The Swedish government did not press charges.
A 2005 Swedish documentary about the Guantanamo Bay detention camp starred Ghezali, who detailed his experience in American custody.
He was also reportedly among 12 foreigners captured trying to cross into Afghanistan in 2009.
Earlier on Thursday the Bulgarian police
released a brief video clip that claimed to show the suicide bomber,
responsible for Wednesday’s terror attack on a tour bus full of Israeli citizens, walking around shortly before the blast at Burgas International Airport.
The Bulgarian news agency Sofia reported that the bomber was carrying an American passport and Michigan driver’s license, both believed to be forgeries.
Sofia also reported that the Bulgarian
Interior Ministry managed to recover the fingerprints of the bomber,
which they submitted to the FBI in the United States and the
international police organization Interpol. The FBI and CIA joined
Israeli and Bulgarian officials in investigating the attack.
Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov told Sofia
that DNA tests were being run to determine the identity of the
Caucasian man, who the minister described as casually dressed with
nothing suspicious about his appearance to set him apart from the crowd
of people at the airport.
The ministry did not indicate how the police
came to the conclusion that the man caught on airport security cameras
in the clip was the suicide bomber.
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