40 Witnesses Being Heard in the Trial of Bourgas Airport Terrorist Attack

The specialized criminal court in Bourgas on 16^th and 17^th of May holds hearings in connection with the Bourgas Airport bombing. The reason for the sitting being in Bourgas is that many of the witnesses could not come to the previous meeting in Sofia.

On 18th of July, 2012, a bomb exploded in a bus with Israeli tourists just arriving for their vacation in the Bulgarian coastal city of Bourgas. The blast killed five Israeli citizens, a Bulgarian bus driver and 35 people were injured. The seventh victim was the bomber himself.

Nikolinka Andreeva, owner of a hotel in Nessebar, told the court that the suicide bomber, Mohamed Hassan El Husseini, hired a room in her hotel a few days before the attack, for six days and six nights. On the day of the terrorist attack, he paid for his overnight stay in the hotel, and did not return.

One of the helpers of the attacker stayed in Nessebar, a resort on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, for two months before the attack. He stayed with a cousin of Plamen Zhekov, who told the court that they had often had a chat in a nearby café.

He was a suspicious tourist, because he said, he had come to look for a woman, and in April you know, tourism does not yet start, so what women would he meet? He was a good “actor”. His story was that he lived in Sweden, because in Israel his sister died because of a misdiagnosis, he exposed the doctors and they tried to destroy him, Zhekov said.

Mohamad Hassan El-Husseini hired a car from a Nessebar company several times. The company official regarded him as a normal tourist.

Stoyanka Todorova told the court that she could not tell whether his documents were false – Canadian origin, Canadian passport, he paid, asked for a car at a cheap rate. He seemed perfectly normal, with a baseball cap. I would even say, with a white face, that is, not with an Arab look, she said.

The two accused of being accomplices are still being sought by Interpol. Up to now, over 50 civil claims for damages have been received through Bulgarian and Israeli lawyers.