Canadian Arrested for Monitoring Jewish Center in Sofia - Report

Details have emerged regarding the Iranian agent that was allegedly arrested by Bulgarian authorities in Sofia after engaging in surveillance of the local Chabad center back in 2012.

The Jerusalem Post reported at the beginning of April that a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard surveilled a synagogue in Bulgarian capital just days after the deadly Burgas bus bombing.  According to this report, an officer of the elite Quds Force, part of the Revolutionary Guard, had been arrested by Bulgarian authorities while inspecting the main synagogue in Sofia.

The Jerusalem Post has now revealed details about the alleged officer. The paper has cited a “well-placed and reliable local source” as saying that the arrested individual was a Canadian citizen linked to the Iranian government.

“An Iranian-sponsored female agent in her 50s, holding a Canadian passport, traveled from Istanbul to Sofia several weeks after the bombing of the Israeli tour bus in the Black Sea resort town of Burgas in July 2012. She was arrested on her first day in Sofia after the Bulgarian police, on high alert, noticed she was monitoring the Chabad center,” the paper says.

The Jerusalem Post has now stated that the agent’s mission was to survey the Chabad center – which houses a synagogue – and not the main Sofia Sephardi synagogue, as first reported.

The Canadian may be a dual Iranian-Canadian citizen.

The source added that Bulgarian security officials detained a group of individuals after the Burgas terror attack. It is unclear who the detainees were.

On February 5, then-Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov stated that Bulgarian investigators had "a well-founded assumption" that the perpetrators of the deadly attack belonged to the military formation of Hezbollah.

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