Bulgaria links Lebanese to bombing, printer and telecom evidence

Al-Akhbar | February 18, 2013

As Bulgaria claims to have found new evidence linking Hezbollah to the deadly attack on Israeli tourists last July, Israel, the United States, Britain, and the Netherlands have continued to pressure the European Union to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization and impose sanctions on the resistance group.

Placing Hezbollah on the terror list requires unanimity among the EU’s 27 member states.

France and Italy have so far opposed sanctions, but Israel says they may be convinced to put some senior Hezbollah officials on the terror list.

“If we get that we’ll consider it an achievement,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official, cited in Haaretz Monday.

Lebanese Kataeb Party leader Amin Gemayel said Monday that the accusation by the Bulgarian government was evidence that Hezbollah could not be seen as “neutral.”

The Bulgarian opposition accused the government in early February of prematurely accusing Hezbollah before the investigation had been concluded.

Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) leader Sergei Stanishev had said that Bulgaria was acting under US and Israeli pressure and had entered “into a political game in an irresponsible manner, without calculating the consequences.”

Hezbollah’s Naim Kassem, the group’s number two, slammed the “international campaign of intimidation waged by Israel against Hezbollah” three weeks ago, saying it is “ever improving its equipment and training” and that “these charges will change nothing.”

The Bulgarian government had released a report concluding that three Hezbollah members were behind the July attack that killed five Israeli tourists, based on evidence including a computer printer in Beirut, DNA traces on a SIM card and telephone calls from the bombers to Hezbollah officials.

The Bulgarian government said they had well-grounded reasons to suspect that the three attackers were Lebanese with foreign passports and forged drivers licenses from Canada and Australia.

With the help of foreign intelligence agents, drivers licenses were shown to have been printed on a printer in Lebanon, according to the Bulgarian report.

The US government have in the past convinced some color laser printer manufacturers to encode every page printed with identifying information, but not all printers do so.

Two of the attackers were said to have returned to Lebanon after the attack, while one of attackers died unintentionally during the bombing.

Two Israelis had allegedly confronted the unintentional suicide bomber while he was trying to put his booby-trapped backpack into the bus’ cargo hold. The bomb was said to have exploded prematurely because of the “shaking.”

The investigation’s allegations regarding the role of Lebanon and Hezbollah in the bombing remain unclear and disputed.

Aware of the traceability of mobile phones and internet communications, Hezbollah currently operates within a highly secure landline network to avoid tracking.

The debate on the usefulness and reliability of telephone calls or found SIM cards as evidence in criminal investigations has been ongoing in Lebanon, particularly since evidence of telephone calls linking certain individuals to the Hariri assassination in 2005 was leaked as part of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

The evidence is considered especially unreliable in Lebanon, given Israel’s known tampering in telephone networks in Lebanon, with the capability of forging SIM cards and tampering with collected data on the networks.

The International Telecommunications Union in 2010 passed three resolutions against Israel for “piracy and attacks against fixed and cellular telephone networks in Lebanon.”

The resolutions determined that “Lebanon’s telecommunication facilities have been and are still being subjected to piracy, interference and interruption, and sedition by Israel against Lebanon’s fixed and cellular telephone networks.”

Israel has not yet halted their activities or provided Lebanon with reparations for the damages incurred so far.

Related articles

• Bulgarian Opposition Blasts Burgas Bombing Charge (alethonews.wordpress.com)
• Bulgarian revelations explode Hezbollah bombing “hypothesis” (realisticbird.wordpress.com)

Bulgarian Opposition Blasts Burgas Bombing Charge

By Yahya Dbouk | Al-Akhbar | February 6, 2013

The US and Israel are using the accusations leveled against Hezbollah in the 2012 Burgas bus bombing to pressure the EU into including the resistance group on its terrorist list. But the Bulgarian opposition is crying foul.

Israeli and US pressure on Bulgarian authorities to formally accuse Hezbollah as the organization behind the 18 June 2012 bus bombing in the city of Burgas – in which six people, including five Israelis, were killed – has not been entirely successful.

They have succeeded in pressuring the Bulgarian investigators probing the bombing to link the attack to Hezbollah. This has been done in such a way as to strike a compromise between the hardline stances of Israel and the US, and the cautious position of European countries, who do not see it in their interest to up the ante against Hezbollah at this juncture.

Bulgarian Minister of Interior Tsvetan Tsvetanov announced Tuesday, 5 February 2013, that two people believed to have been connected to Hezbollah were involved in the Burgas bombing.

Speaking after a special meeting of the country’s Consultative Council on National Security to discuss the investigation’s findings, Tsvetanov said the pair were part of a group of three who carried out the attack. The two had traveled on Australian and Canadian passports, and lived in Lebanon since 2006 and 2010, respectively.

The minister went on to say that “there is data showing the financing and connection between Hezbollah and the two suspects,” and that investigators had “a well-founded assumption that they belonged to the military wing of Hezbollah.”

The wording of his remarks was significant. It could foil longstanding Israeli and US efforts to pressure the EU to designate Hezbollah in its entirety as a terrorist organization, as opposed to merely its “military wing.”

Tsvetanov also said that the Lebanese authorities had been asked for assistance in the probe.

From Lebanon to Bulgaria, the Opposition Reacts

The announcement was quickly challenged by Sergei Stanishev, leader of Bulgaria’s parliamentary opposition and the head of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, who charged that finger-pointing against Hezbollah was unfounded and politically motivated.

“It is obvious that Bulgaria’s government has chosen a political approach and is only repeating the interpretation alleged by Israel on the very next day following the attack, when the investigation had not even started,” he said, as quoted by the Sofia News Agency.

“The investigation is currently underway, and there is no way one can be talking about decisive evidence regarding the direct perpetrators, much less regarding the organization that is behind this tragic event,” Stanishev added.

The Agency quoted sources at the Bulgarian foreign ministry as saying that security had been stepped up at the country’s embassy in Beirut as a precaution against possible attacks.

The Bulgarian opposition’s skepticism over the Hezbollah accusation has made no impression on the Lebanese opposition. Members of the March 14 coalition seized on the news, and some predicted it would lead to the downfall of Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s government, of which Hezbollah is a member.

Senior sources in the Future Movement told Al-Akhbar that it had already been agreed that Mikati would step down once a new election law is in place, “but now we have been unexpectedly given the Bulgarian accusation.”

The sources said Future Movement MPs discussed the issue at a meeting Tuesday, but decided not to discuss the Bulgarian charge against Hezbollah in the media for the time being.

Nevertheless, a prominent Future Movement MP remarked to Al-Akhbar: “How can a partnership be established in this country on the basis of terrorism?” He added that in demanding that the government quit, “we are not speaking from a position of hostility or score-settling,” but “out of concern for the country and its interests.”

Sources close to the prime minister denied that the government had any intention of stepping down in the wake of the Bulgarian minister’s announcement. The source attributed the suggestion to “the wishful thinking of the March 14 camp.”

In his public reaction to the announcement, Mikati reiterated Lebanon’s readiness to cooperate with the Bulgarian authorities “to shed light on the circumstances” of the incident, while stressing its condemnation of all such attacks in any European or Arab country.

Lebanese official sources said Beirut had been informed earlier that four members of Hezbollah would be accused of complicity in the bombing. It also knew in advance that the Bulgarians would draw a distinction between Hezbollah’s military wing and Hezbollah itself in order to avoid its placement on the EU terrorist list.

Yet no Lebanese officials were informed of the suspects’ identities, the sources said. The only request for assistance received from Bulgarian investigators by Lebanese judicial authorities was a request to search for an individual’s fingerprints in Lebanese records.

While Hezbollah remained silent, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to seize on the news to demand that the EU designate Hezbollah a terrorist organization and not distinguish between its military and political wings.

In a statement released by his office, Netanyahu thanked the Bulgarian government for its “thorough and professional investigation” and elaborated on how Iran and Hezbollah were “orchestrating a worldwide campaign of terror,” as well as supporting “the murderous Assad regime in Syria.”

The Israeli prime minister’s words were parroted almost verbatim by US President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism advisor John Brennan, who urged EU states to ”take proactive action to uncover Hezbollah’s infrastructure and disrupt the group’s financing schemes and operational networks.”

The EU itself seemed less eager than the US and Israel to put Hezbollah on its terrorism list. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton merely took note of the results of the Bulgarian probe and stressed the need to “reflect on the consequences.” She said that “the EU and member states will discuss the appropriate response based on all elements identified by the investigators.”

Israeli media had reported in advance of the Bulgarian announcement that Israel’s contribution to the probe had enabled investigators to link the Burgas bombing to Hezbollah. Israeli reports over the past two months had anticipated that Hezbollah and Iran – Hezbollah as an organization and the Iranian state – would be accused of funding and implementing the attack.

Pfizer Pays $60 Million for Bribing Foreign Doctors

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | August 10, 2012

Foreign subsidiaries of Pfizer spent years bribing foreign doctors and healthcare officials to expand sales of the company’s pharmaceuticals, according to a $60 million settlement reached with the U.S. government.

The deal, brokered by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Department of Justice, resolves charges of illegal activities that took place in about a dozen countries, including China, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kazakhstan, and Russia.

“Pfizer subsidiaries in several countries had bribery so entwined in their sales culture that they offered points and bonus programs to improperly reward foreign officials who proved to be their best customers,” Kara Brockmeyer, an SEC official, said in a news release. “These charges illustrate the pitfalls that exist for companies that fail to appropriately monitor potential risks in their global operations.”

In China, a subsidiary awarded doctors with points for every Pfizer prescription they wrote, allowing them to redeem the points for medical books, cell phones, and other gifts. In some cases, Pfizer’s China operation bribed physicians with free trips abroad.

Pfizer officials in the U.S. reportedly learned of the bribes in 2004 and began in internal investigation that kept federal regulators in the loop on what they discovered. The company insisted its executives knew nothing about the schemes before then.

Related articles

• Pfizer Admits Bribery in Eight Countries (corpwatch.org)

Iranian bomb in Bulgaria: Cui Bono?

By Cyrus Safdari | Iran Affairs | July 19, 2012

So a bomb exploded on a bus in Bulgaria killing a certain number of people who were apparently visitors from Israel. About 20 minutes later, Israeli PM Netanyahu is accusing Iran of carrying out the bombing. Speculation is rife. Pundits feel a need to opine, even though they didn’t know any facts about the incident either. A few more hours pass, and Trita Parsi writes that it is plausible that Iran was indeed behind the bombing, as a sort of retaliation against Israel for the murders of Iranian nuclear scientists. I guess “plausible” is all that things need be in order to implicate Iran.)

Trita does make an interesting point though:

US officials have privately expressed concern that one of the purposes of Israeli attacks in Iran has been to generate an Iranian response that could serve as a casus belli for Israel. That way, Israel could target Iran’s nuclear facilities without paying the heavy political cost of starting a preventive war.

This of course is the “provocation-followed-by-retaliation” technique that Moshe Dayan told Moshe Sharret would be used by Israel to justify its aggression, years ago.

I pointed out to Trita that Israel and the US are both reported to be behind the Jundollah terrorists, who have murdered a number of Iranians in terrorist attacks launched from Pakistan. So if we proceed on the “retaliation” theory, Iran certainly has lots to retaliate for.

However, I don’t buy the retaliation theory either. What would Iran have to gain from hitting back like this? What would “retaliation” get Iran? The cost to Iran of being actually implicated in such an event would far outweigh any benefit of retaliation (and I can’t think of any tangible benefit from retaliation either.) And why assume that when Israelis are blown up, only Iran can be the guilty party? Its not as if Israel has a dearth of opponents.

So what benefit would accrue to Iran by blowing up some random busload of people somewhere?