Reporter Apologizes for Suggesting Israel Bribed Bulgaria on Bomb Probe

Image by haaretz

By JTA February 6, 2013

A correspondent for the Financial Times apologized for suggesting that Israel may have bribed Bulgaria to frame Hezbollah.

“Sincere apologies and regret for ill-conceived tweet yesterday about Israel and Bulgaria,” Borzou Daragahi, the London-based newspaper’s Middle East and North Africa correspondent, wrote Wednesday on Twitter.

The previous day Daragahi had tweeted, “I don’t doubt Hezbollah/Iran could be behind Bulgaria bombing, but also think Israel could pay Sofia to say anything.” He included a URL of a Reuters article quoting Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov as blaming two Hezbollah operatives for the July 18 bus bombing in Burgas in which six people were killed, including five Israeli tourists.

“We have well-grounded reasons to suggest that the two were members of the militant wing of Hezbollah,” Tsvetanov said.

Daragahi’s apology came after a harsh statement concerning his comment by HonestReporting, an Israel-based media watchdog group.

“It is disgraceful for someone who calls himself a journalist to deal in second-rate conspiracy mongering,” HonestReporting CEO Joe Hyams said in a statement published on the organization’s website.

Founded in 1888, the Financial Times has a combined print and online average daily readership of 2.1 million worldwide, according to its website.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO