The Bulgarian media say they have identified the suicide bomber that Israel says was Iran’s doing as a CIA torture victim detained in Guantanamo Bay for 2 years.
Bulgaria Bomber Identified As CIA Torture Victim
At this point Guantanamo Bay is beginning to look more like an CIA training ground for false flag operatives than a torture prison for terrorists – especially given the high rate of released “torture victims” who after being released manage to somehow travel around the world under the radar of the international intelligence community only to reappear to at exactly at the right time they are needed to conduct “terrorist attacks” beneficial to the west’s imperialistic political agenda.
The Bulgarian media say the man who conducted yesterday’s terrorist bombings that Israel is using to justify military action against Iran was a former prisoner in the CIA’s torture prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
According to the reports, they have identified the terrorist as Mehdi Ghezali, an Algerian-Swedish Islamist, who was tortured by the CIA for 2 years after he was arrested in Afghanistan following the battle of Tora Bora.
Suspiciously, the man was arrested after being released while traveling with a group of Al-CIAda terrorist that were carrying $10,000 cash and maps of Western embassies along with explosive belts after being released from Gitmo on to be released again.
Ghezali, whose identity has been confirmed not only from CCTV footage (see video below) but also by his fingerprints which were lifted from the scene and sent to the FBI and Interpol for confirmation, also was in possession of a U.S. passport and Michigan Driver’s license which were both able to allow him to travel but which the FBI says they can find no record of.
Yet despite all of this, Israel is point the finger at Iran and has been all over the news say they will retaliate against Iran for the attack.
From RT:
Burgas suicide bomber identified by media as Guantanamo jihadist
Bulgarian media have named the suicide bomber responsible for killing himself and six others in Burgas airport on Wednesday. The terrorist is alleged to be Mehdi Ghezali, an Algerian-Swedish Islamist who spent two years in Guantanamo Bay.
Officials have so far refused to comment on the information.
Previously, local police matched up airport CCTV footage with the remnants near the bus carrying Israeli tourists that was destroyed in the explosion. The likely suicide bomber was carrying a US driving license bearing the name Jacque Felipe Martin that authorities believe to be a forgery.
Mehdi Ghezali is a 33 year-old Islamist, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2001 and subsequently spent two years in detention in Guantanamo. When he was sent back to Sweden, the local government refused to press charges against him. He was arrested again by Pakistani authorities on the Afghanistan border in 2009, but once again set free upon extradition back to his homeland.
The suspect – a long-haired man in shorts wearing two rucksacks – looked no different than the thousands of other holidaymakers at the popular Black Sea resort. He roamed the airport for an hour, apparently waiting for the tourists arriving from Tel Aviv to go through customs before approaching their transfer bus and detonating his bomb.
Five Israelis, the Bulgarian driver and the bomber were instantly killed. Two more tourists remain in serious condition in the capital Sofia, while an Israeli military plane has flown around thirty others who were wounded back to Israel.
Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said the bomber had spent between four days and a week in the country.
”We cannot exclude the possibility that he had logistical support on Bulgarian territory,” said Tsvetanov.
Police have taken a DNA sample from the skin of the terrorist to see if it is listed in any international criminal databases.
[…]
Source: RT
From Business Insider:
Bulgaria Suicide Bomber Identified As A Swedish Extremist Released From Guantánamo
Bulgarian media have named the reported suicide bomber who killed six Israeli tourists and two Bulgarianswhen he exploded a bus yesterday as Mehdi Ghezali.The Times of Israel reports that Ghezali was Swedish citizen of Algerian and Finnish origins who had been held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay from 2002 to 2004.
In 2009 Michael Moynihan of the Weekly Standard reported that Ghezali was released from Guantánamo and sent to Sweden on a government jet after an intense lobbying effort by Swedish prime minister Göran Persson.
Bulgarian news agency Sofia reports that Ghezali was carrying a U.S. passport and a fake Michigan drivers license, noting that an FBI database check did not find an individual with such documents and it remains unclear how he obtained the fake passport and the circumstances surrounding his entrance in Bulgaria.
Sofia also reported that the Bulgarian Interior Ministry managed to recover fingerprints of the bomber, which they gave to the U.S. – who has joined Israeli and Bulgarian officials in the investigation – as well as Interpol.
[…]
Ghezali had been detained during the battle at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, in late 2001 and being handed over to the U.S. military and sent to Guantánamo Bay. […]
Ghezali was arrested a second time in 2009, this time in Pakistan, while traveling with a group of multinational extremists who crossed the border from Iran on their way to the al-Queda stronghold of Waziristan. The group, according to Pakistani authorities, had $10,000 cash and maps indicating Western embassies along with explosive belts.
[…]
More to come as the story develops.
SEE ALSO:Terror Attack On Israeli Tourists At Bulgarian Airport Kills At Least Six >
Source: Business Insider
On Israel’s using the incident as propaganda to wage war against Iran:
[…]
The shadow war
Israel did not hesitate in naming the perpetrators of the attack.
“All signs point to Iran. This is an Iranian terror offensive that is spreading throughout the world,” said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The past year has seen attacks on Israeli embassies in Georgia, India and Kenya. Israel says that each time the investigation led back to Iran, Israel’s principal enemy.
“The direct executors are Hezbollah,” claimed Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak. The Lebanese Islamist organization enjoys ideological and financial ties with Tehran.
“Israel will do all it can to find those responsible and punish them, both those who carried it out directly and those who dispatched them,” promised Barak.
In response, Iranian TV branded the accusations “sensationalist” and “ridiculous.”
Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov said further investigations will be necessary before a definitive perpetrator of the attack is found.
“It is wrong and a mistake to point fingers at this stage of the investigation at any country or organization,” stated Mladenov.
[…]
Source:RT
From Zero Hedge:
Alleged Mastermind Behind Israel Bus Explosion Identified As Swedish National Mehdi Ghezali
The latest development in yesterday’s Bulgarian bus bomb explosion, is the identification of the alleged bomber. According to Times of Israel he is Mehdi Ghezali, “reportedly a Swedish citizen, with Algerian and Finnish origins. He had been held at the US’s Guantanamo Bay detainment camp on Cuba from 2002 to 2004, having previously studied at a Muslim religious school and mosque in Britain, and traveled to Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. He was also reportedly among 12 foreigners captured trying to cross into Afghanistan in 2009.”
There’s more:
Sofia also reported that the Bulgarian Interior Ministry managed to recover the fingerprints of the bomber, which they submitted to the FBI in the United States and the international police organization Interpol. The FBI and CIA joined Israeli and Bulgarian officials in investigating the attack.
Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov told Sofia that DNA tests were being run to determine the identity of the Caucasian man, who the minister described as casually dressed with nothing suspicious about his appearance to set him apart from the crowd of people at the airport.
What is curious is that this is not the first time Mehdi has made headline news. Below is a lengthy exposition on the Swede from 2009 via the Weekly Standard:
With a black baseball cap pulled tight over a mop of stringy long hair and a patchy, close-cropped beard, Mehdi-Muhammed Ghezali looked more like a Metallica roadie than a disciple of Ayman al-Zawahiri. He addressed the scrum of reporters in a clipped, heavily accented Swedish and accused the American government of wrongly detaining him for three years and “physically and mentally” torturing him. A book about his experiences was in the works; a documentary crew, cobbling together a film about American human rights abuses, had requested an audience; and his legal team was plotting a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld. It was 2004, and Ghezali was a free man.
In late 2001, Ghezali, a Swedish national, had been detained during the battle at Tora Bora, Afghanistan, handed over to the American military, and sent to the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay. According to his lawyers, he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Although he spoke none of the local languages, Ghezali told his captors, in the midst of the Taliban’s retreat into the mountainous hinterlands of Afghanistan, he had crossed that country’s border with Pakistan to study Islam.
After an intense lobbying effort by Swedish prime minister Göran Persson–and a vague promise that the country’s intelligence services would keep a watchful eye on him–Ghezali was delivered to Sweden (on the government’s private Gulfstream jet). The Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter noted that Ghezali had achieved “rock star status” upon returning to his homeland, a native victim of America’s rapacious imperialism. And after two-plus years in isolation, the emotionally fragile former prisoner would be happy to discover “that a majority of Swedes were glad that he was home.”
That his story was threaded with head-scratching omissions and inexplicable gaps in chronology–the years in Cuba were, apparently, not enough time to concoct a consistent narrative–seemed to have little effect on his credibility. To his supporters, he was merely a bit player in a larger morality play. But even his most credulous supporters winced when, during a press conference in his hometown of Örebro, Ghezali offered the following opinion of Osama bin Laden: “I don’t know him as a person and therefore can’t pass judgment on him. I don’t believe what the Americans say about him.”
Sweden’s justice minister ruled out prosecuting Ghezali, and the story faded from the public consciousness. But in a country with a significant Muslim minority, it was perhaps inevitable that the foreign ministry would find itself in a similar situation again.
In 2007, the Swedish government interceded on behalf of 17-year-old Safia Benaouda, a Stockholm native and convert to Islam, after she was arrested and jailed by the Ethiopian military, then battling Somali Islamists. Ethiopian officials told Sweden’s foreign minister, Carl Bildt, that Benaouda had fled Somalia after the defeat of the Islamic Courts Union, on whose behalf she was accused of waging jihad, and had been detained with other fighters after crossing the border into Kenya.
According to the Stockholm-based newspaper Aftonbladet, Swedish diplomats engaged in “discreet meetings with the Pentagon, tribal leaders, and African government officials” to secure her release. Benaouda’s mother, chairman of the Muslim Council of Sweden, wrote that her daughter was questioned by members of the CIA and beaten by guards–accusations amplified by the Associated Press. After her release, Benaouda went further, claiming that she was tortured in custody, a measure “planned and orchestrated by the Americans or other western interrogators.” The claim ensured her permanent victim status in Sweden.
The cases of Ghezali and Benaouda–frequently invoked in the Swedish media as examples of America’s tyrannical war on terror–were unrelated. There was no indication that the two had ever met or that they belonged to the same Scandinavian cell of Islamic militants. But the two innocents abroad, curious students of fundamentalist Islam, would soon find each other.
According to reports in the Swedish media, Ghezali and Benaouda were arrested last week in Pakistan–together, travelling with a multinational group of extremists–having crossed the border from Iran on their way to the al Qaeda stronghold of Waziristan. Pakistani sources claim that the group was carrying $50,000 in cash, maps indicating Western embassies, and–every religion student’s best friend–an explosives belt. One of the suspects, according to a report in the Swedish newspaper Expressen, chewed up the SIM card of his cell phone before he was taken into custody.
Source: Zero Hedge
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