Bulgarian police widen bombing probe

WASHINGTON — An Australian is among the suspects in a bus bombing that killed five Israelis and a driver in a Bulgarian resort last year, two Western officials said Tuesday. The officials are familiar with the investigation and spoke only on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the news media.

A Canadian suspected of organizing the bombing of a bus full of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria is a relative of the unidentified terrorist who died while planting the explosives, the National Post has learned. DNA testing has confirmed the terrorist attack that killed six at the Sarafovo Airport last July was a family affair, but officials have not determined whether the bomb carrier who died was also a Canadian citizen.

The terrorists responsible for last July’s deadly bus bombing on the Black Sea are all currently in the same country, a senior Bulgarian law enforcement official said Wednesday without identifying the men’s whereabouts. Stanimir Florov, who heads the Main Directorate for Combatting Organized Crime, told Bulgarian television his government was aware of the location of the suspects, who have been identified as a Canadian and an Australian.

WASHINGTON — Surveillance video from the Boston Marathon attack shows one suspect dropping his backpack and calmly walking away from it before the bomb inside it exploded, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Sunday. The video clearly puts 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev at the scene of the attack, Patrick said on NBC.

Palestinians on Sunday called for an international investigation of Israel’s treatment of detained Palestinians after a 30-year-old Palestinian died in custody and a hunger strike by four other inmates sparked a week of West Bank protests. The death of Arafat Jaradat set off more clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian stone-throwers in several areas of the West Bank on Sunday. In one incident, two Palestinians were wounded by army fire, including a 15-year-old boy who was shot in the chest, a Palestinian health official said.

WASHINGTON — The FBI affidavit accompanying federal charges against the suspected Boston Marathon bomber has revealed new details of the allegations against the two young men accused of unleashing a reign of terror that paralyzed the city of Boston last week. The April 15 bombings killed three people and wounded nearly 200 others.

WASHINGTON — Russian authorities secretly recorded a telephone conversation in 2011 in which one of the Boston bombing suspects vaguely discussed jihad with his mother, officials said Saturday, days after the U.S. government finally received details about the call. In another conversation, the mother of now-dead bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev was recorded talking to someone in southern Russia who is under FBI investigation in an unrelated case, officials said.

Bulgarian police released a composite image Wednesday of the man accused of carrying out a suicide bomb attack on a bus at Burgas airport last month, in which five Israeli tourists and the Bulgarian bus driver died.