Europol, the European Union’s police body, said in its annual report on terrorism in the EU that "indications suggest possible links" between Hezbollah and the terrorist bus attack at the Sarafovo airport in Burgas, Bulgaria, which killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian driver last year.
Europol endorsed the report of a six-month-long investigation by Bulgarian security services into the July 19, 2012 bombing.
In February, Bulgarian Interior Minister said the attack was carried out by agents of Hezbollah’s military wing with funding provided by the Shiite group.
The two suspects, Hezbollah operatives, including a dual Lebanese-Canadian citizen, are still at large.
The Bulgarian probe led to renewed calls for the European Union to join the United States, Israel, the Netherlands, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in classifying Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
But several EU countries including Germany and France, appear to be reluctant to take this step because it may harm their relations with Lebanon, where Hezbollah is part of the government.
Last week, Bulgarian authorities conducted a reenactment of the Burgass bombing.
Dummies were placed inside and around the buses with maximum precision, following thorough examinations of security cameras and witness accounts.
Boyko Naydenov, head of the National Investigating Service, said that the re-enactment is meant to give answers to several questions, such as where the terrorist was standing and how much explosive material was used for the attack.
Meanwhile, according to a Jerusalem Post report, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard surveilled a Chabad synagogue in Sofia just days after the deadly Burgas bus bombing. According to this report, an officer of the elite Quds Force, part of the Revolutionary Guard, had been arrested by Bulgarian authorities while inspecting the synagogue.
“An Iranian-sponsored female agent in her 50s, holding a Canadian passport, traveled from Istanbul to Sofia several weeks after the bombing of the Israeli tour bus in the Black Sea resort town of Burgas in July 2012. She was arrested on her first day in Sofia after the Bulgarian police, on high alert, noticed she was monitoring the Chabad center,” the newspaper wrote.
Last week, the US Treasury charged Hezbollah with operating like an international drug cartel, alleging that the Iran-backed terrorist organization uses the money that it traffics through the US to fund violence and undermine American interests.
The Treasury Department also invoked the Patriot Act to blacklist two Lebanese money-exchange houses for collectively moving hundreds of millions of dollars in drug proceeds and used cars through the US and Africa.
Illicit finance experts have blasted Hezbollah for turning Lebanon into a "veritable money laundering machine." That the group is willing to endanger Lebanon's entire financial system in order to promote its campaigns has been used by analysts to ridicule the suggestion that Hezbollah is an indigenous Lebanese group promoting Lebanese interests, rather than an Iranian proxy willing to sacrifice Lebanese stability and prosperity at Tehran’s behest. »