Bulgarian Interior Minister Backs Expulsion of Hamas Delegation

Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov has defended the expulsion of a four-member Hamas delegation from the country earlier on Friday.

The four Palestinians were expulsed because of their membership in Hamas, Tsvetanov told reporters on Friday.

Tsvetanov confirmed that that the Hamas representatives that visited Bulgaria were not on any list with persons banned from entering the EU.

He added that they were invited to Bulgaria by a Bulgarian citizen with a Palestinian origin who heads an NGO.

On Friday, it surfaced that the group of four Hamas members had been expelled from Bulgaria by the State Agency for National Security (DANS), after legally arriving on Wednesday. The group had arrived in Bulgaria at the invitation of the NGO Center for Global and Middle East Studies to participate in a conference, which was however cancelled after their visit was cut short.

The Bulgarian Foreign Ministry noted that the visit was not official.

Bulgarian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Vessela Tcherneva told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday that "Bulgaria is part of the EU politics as listing Hamas as a terror organization.