AJC Transatlantic Institute Welcomes the EU's Designation of Hezbollah's Military Wing
IranTerrorism & Radicalism
22 July 2013 – Brussels – The AJC Transatlantic Institute welcomed the decision of the European Union at today's Foreign Affairs Council to list the "military wing" of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.
"Today's decision by EU Foreign Ministers is a significant official recognition of Hezbollah's true, violent nature," said Daniel Schwammenthal, Director of the AJC Transatlantic Institute in Brussels. "More than one year after the attacks against innocent civilians in Burgas, Bulgaria and the uncovering of a similar plot in Cyprus, the EU has sent a strong message to its citizens and, most importantly, to Hezbollah that terror will never be tolerated."
Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetlin Yovchev said last week that "There are clear signs that say Hezbollah is behind the Burgas bombing," which claimed the lives of six civilians when a bomb was detonated on a bus on 18 July, 2012. A Cypriot court in March convicted self-identified Hezbollah member Hossam Taleb Yaacoub, a dual Lebanese and Swedish citizen, of five charges related to a planned attack in Cyprus, which authorities foiled last July.
"Hezbollah's long history of terror, which dates back to its founding in the early 1980s, has been a constant source of threat to civilians in Europe and around the world," noted Schwammenthal. "While AJC, like the U.S., Canadian and Dutch governments, considers Hezbollah a single organization, the EU has sent a strong message that such terrorist behaviour is unacceptable!"
AJC, a global advocacy organization, maintains offices across Europe – in Berlin, Paris and Rome – along with its Transatlantic Institute in Brussels. AJC experts published op-ed articles on the EU and Hezbollah in the Wall Street Journal, El Pais, and major U.S. media.
HezbollahCouncil of the European UnionBurgas Attack
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Anti-SemitismIranIsrael
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IranTransatlantic Relations
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