Al-Qaeda emerges as Bulgaria bomb suspect

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.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NG25Ak03.html