Court Allowed Civil Claims for 200 m BGN in Bourgas Airport Bombing Case

The Bulgarian court which will consider the case of the terrorist act at Bourgas Airport allowed submitting of civil claims for a record amount of over BGN 200 mln on behalf of nearly 50 victims against the two suspects.

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.

The two suspects accused in-abstenia are Meliad Farah, holder of Australian passport and Hassan El Hajj Hassan, a Canadian passport-holder and Lebanese citizenship.

A year since the first sitting was scheduled, the court managed to properly summon the relatives of the victims in Israel and other witnesses. However, it was expected that the sitting might be postponed because lawyers would be absent.

Israeli citizens, as well as the relatives of the murdered driver Mustafa Kyosov, were also accepted as private prosecutors in the case. The court did not allow financial claims to be made to Hezbollah's Military Wing, although some of the victims had such claims. The reason is that there is no evidence in the indictment that the two defendants acted on the order of the Lebanese Shiite group.