Relatives of the Israeli tourists murdered in a July 2012 Hezbollah attack in Bulgaria grieve at a memorial service at the Sofia synagogue. Photo: Reuters/Stoyan Nenov

Bulgaria’s highest court has upheld the life sentences imposed in absentia on two Hezbollah terrorists convicted of a July 2012 terrorist attack at the airport in the resort of Burgas which resulted in the deaths of five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver.

In an announcement on Wednesday, Bulgaria’s Supreme Court of Cassation confirmed the life sentences for Meliad Farah, a dual citizen of Australia and Lebanon, and Hassan El Hajj Hassan, who carries a Canadian passport, with no eligibility for parole. However, neither man has been apprehended and their whereabouts are unknown. Both are the subjects of a “red notice” — an international arrest warrant — issued by the global law enforcement agency Interpol.

“The court’s affirmation of the guilty verdict and sentence is noteworthy, but must be followed by enforcement of the Interpol red notices for the two men, to ensure they serve their sentences,” Toby Dershowitz — senior vice president for government relations and strategy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think-tank — told The Algemeiner following the Supreme Court’s announcement.

The attack in Burgas took place on July 18, 2012, when a suicide bomber detonated himself on a tourist bus carrying 42 Israelis who had just flown in from Tel Aviv. Five Israelis — Maor Harush, Itzik Kolangi, Amir Menashe, Elior Preiss and Kochava Shriki, a pregnant woman — lost their lives in the attack along with the Bulgarian bus driver, Mustafa Kyosov. US intelligence agencies later identified the bomber as Mohamad Hassan El-Husseini, a 25-year-old French-Lebanese dual national and Hezbollah operative, while the then Bulgarian Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, stated in 2013 that there were are “clear signs that say Hezbollah is behind the Burgas bombing.”

One year later, the Bulgarian interior ministry released photographs of Farah and Hassan, charging them with having planned the atrocity. In Sept. 2020, a court sentenced the two men to life imprisonment in absentia.

The attack brought renewed attention to Iran’s backing for Lebanon’s Hezbollah and other terrorist groups in the region. Directly after the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged that the Jewish state would “reactivating  firmly to this global Iranian terror onslaught.” Separately, the EU voted in 2013 to designate Hezbollah’s “military wing” as a terrorist organization — a move that some observers criticized as making a false distinction between Hezbollah as a political party and Hezbollah as a paramilitary organization.

“Moreover, the initial findings of Hezbollah’s role in the bombing led Europe to designate Hezbollah’s so-called military wing,” Dershowitz said. “It’s time for both the EU and Bulgaria itself to designate Hezbollah in its entirety, joining the twenty or so countries that have already done so.”