Officials Deny Bulgaria Bomber Was Guantanamo Detainee

The Lawfare blog has a summary, "Conflicting Reports on Whether Bulgarian Suicide Bomber Was Former Guantanamo Detainee Mehdi Ghezali."

Also at Forward, "Officials Deny Bomber Was Guantanamo Detainee," and the Times of Israel, "‘Bulgarian officials deny bomber is Mehdi Ghezali’."

However, the New York Times makes the Iranian connection, "Hezbollah Is Blamed in Attack on Israeli Tourists in Bulgaria":

BURGAS, Bulgaria — American officials on Thursday identified the suicide bomber responsible for a deadly attack on Israeli vacationers here as a member of a Hezbollah cell that was operating in Bulgaria and looking for such targets, corroborating Israel’s assertions and making the bombing a new source of tension with Iran.

One senior American official said the current American intelligence assessment was that the bomber, who struck Wednesday, killing five Israelis, had been “acting under broad guidance” to hit Israeli targets when opportunities presented themselves, and that the guidance had been given to Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group, by Iran, its primary sponsor. Two other U.S. officials confirmed that Hezbollah was behind the bombing, but declined to provide additional details.

The attacks, the official said, were in retaliation for the assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, which Iran has blamed on Israeli agents — an accusation that Israel has neither confirmed nor denied. “This was tit for tat,” said the American official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still under way.

The bombing comes amid heightened tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran says is for peaceful purposes but Israel and the West say is a cover for developing weapons. The United States and Europe imposed sanctions this month aimed at crippling Iran’s vital oil industry, while Iran has sworn to exact revenge for the assassinations, as well as for cyberattacks on its nuclear industry.

A senior Israeli official said on Thursday that the Burgas attack was part of an intensive wave of terrorist attacks around the world carried out by two different organizations, the Iranian Quds Force, an elite international operations unit within Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, as well as by Hezbollah.

“They work together when necessary, and separately when not necessary,” the Israeli official told reporters on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss national security issues.

While the Burgas attack fit the modus operandi of Hezbollah, the Israeli official said, it was not clear whether the bomber intended to blow himself up or had suffered what the official called a “work accident,” adding, “We will never know.”

The bomber had a fake Michigan driver’s license, but there are no indications that he had any connection to the United States, the American official said, adding that there were no details yet about the bomber like his name or nationality. He also declined to describe what specific intelligence — intercepted communications, analysis of the bomber’s body parts or other details — that led analysts to conclude that the bomber belonged to Hezbollah.

“This looks like he was hanging out for a local target, and when this popped up he jumped on it,” the official said, referring to a bus carrying Israeli tourists outside the airport in Burgas.

More at Independent UK, "Israel threatens a 'heavy price' for Iran after deadly bus bomb: Mr Netanyahu went out of his way to link the attack with Tehran's nuclear ambitions."