Hezbollah Man Found Guilty in Cyprus Terror Plot

A Cypriot court has found a man guilty of participating in a plot to attack Israeli tourists on vacation on the Mediterranean island back in 2012.

Hossam Taleb Yaacoub, a dual Swedish-Lebanese citizen, has been found guilty on five out of the eight charges, including participation in a criminal organization. The three others were conspiracy charges, which the head judge said in the ruling were already covered under the five counts. Yaacoub will be sentenced at a separate hearing.

"It has been proven that Hezbollah is an organization that operates under complete secrecy. There is no doubt that this group has multiple members and proceeds with various activities including military training of its members," the head of the three-judge panel that ruled on the case, Tasia Psara-Miltiadou, said in court Thursday, according to the New York Times.

"Therefore the court rules that Hezbollah acts as a criminal organization."

Yaacoub admitted in court last month that he was a member of Hezbollah. He was arrested in July 2012 in the port city of Limassol. During interrogation by the police he first insisted that he was a trader traveling in Cyprus for business. After days of questioning he said that was a cover story and that he was performing surveillance for the Lebanese group. .

In February, Bulgaria revealed that the Shiite organization may have been involved in the July 18 terror attack that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian bus driver in the Black Sea city of Burgas.

Bulgaria's newly appointed caretaker PM Marin Raykov declared last week that his country does not intend to initiate a procedure to include Hezbollah in the EU's terrorist organizations list.

Only two EU countries currently label Hezbollah a terrorist organization—the UK and the Netherlands. The UK blacklists only the military wing of the Shiite organization.

Blacklisting the organization could allow regional authorities to clamp down on financial flows to the group and open the way for freezing assets linked to Hezbollah in Europe.

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