Report: Agents study possibility Burgas bomber was British
British security agents test DNA of suspected suicide bomber amid fears he was UK national; expert says man on security camera footage was not the terrorist, Daily Mail reports
Agents in the UK are testing the remnants of a man who is thought to be the suicide bomber who killed six people in Burgas in order to assert whether he was a British national, the Daily Mail reported Friday.
According to the report, which cited media outlets in Bulgaria, British security service officials travelled to the eastern European country and took samples from the disembodied corpse of the man who blew himself up, killing five Israeli tourists and a bus driver at Sarafovo Airport last week.
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Looking into the possibility that he may have been British or have been living in the UK before launching the attack, the agents also took the man's dental records.
The new line of investigation came as officials released new images of the bomber after reconstructing the remains of his head, which was found over 200ft from the blast.
The attacker’s identity has remained a mystery, with officials now playing down footage released after the attack which showed the suspected bomber as a white man dressed in Bermuda shorts, a T-shirt and a cap.
An unnamed forensic expert working on the investigation told the Bulgarian media that agents of the UK's security service examined the suicide bomber's body parts.
Wrong man in security footage
Officials have postulated that the bomber may have been duped into carrying out the attack and that he was deliberately picked from an ethnic group different from the one of the attack's organizers, in a move meant to cover their tracks.
Security footage that was taken moments before the blast went off showed a casually dressed tall, white man carrying a large black backpack.
But according to the report, Dr. Kosyo Yankov, who took part in the autopsy of the attacker, said that the body parts suggested the bomber was a heavy man who has nothing to do with the man caught on the security camera.
The reassembled head of the bomber is also to be sent to the Bulgarian capital Sofia shortly to be examined by anthropologists, who hope to determine his nationality and origins from it.
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