Bulgaria returns the remains of 2012 Sarafovo suicide bomber to Lebanon

Bulgaria has returned the remains of the terrorist who carried out the deadly 2012 bombing of a bus carrying Israeli tourists at Sarafovo Airport, Burgas, AFP reports.

The attack at Bulgaria's Burgas airport was the deadliest against Israelis abroad since 2004. Five Israelis, including a pregnant woman, and the Bulgarian bus driver were killed along with the bomber, Mohamad Hassan El-Husseini, 23.

At the Husseini family's request, the head of Lebanon's General Security agency at the time, Abbas Ibrahim, was "in contact with the Bulgarian authorities" to seek the repatriation of the body, the source told AFP.

Bulgarian authorities asked the family to engage a lawyer and agreed to return Husseini's remains during the war between Israel and Hezbollah last year, the source said, requesting anonymity. The family was set to receive his body on Thursday ahead of burial, the source added.

Both Bulgaria and Israel accused Hezbollah of orchestrating the bombing, an accusation that played a part in the European Union's subsequent decision to blacklist the group's military wing as a "terrorist" organisation.

Social media accounts have circulated a notice from Husseini's family setting the funeral for Friday,April 11, in the group's south Beirut stronghold. The body will be buried in a cemetery used for slain Hezbollah fighters.

On July 18, 2012, a bus carrying Israeli tourists—who had just landed at Sarafovo Airport in the Bulgarian city of Burgas for a vacation at the Black Sea—was targeted in a terrorist attack. Five Israeli citizens, the Bulgarian bus driver, and the bomber himself were killed. Nearly 40 others were injured.

In 2020, a Bulgarian court sentenced Lebanese-Australian Meliad Farah and Lebanese-Canadian Hassan El Hajj Hassan to life in prison over the attack. Neither defendant was present for the trial.

Airport CCTV footage showed Husseini wandering inside the airport's arrivals hall with a backpack shortly before the explosion tore through a bus outside the terminal that was headed to a Black Sea resort.