WASHINGTON - Three Hezbollah members and suspects - one of who was convicted in Thailand and sentenced to prison - have been placed on a special US terror watch list, the State Department announced early Wednesday (Thailand time).
One of the men was Hussein Atris, arrested in late 2012 and held for stockpiling explosives at a terrorist safe house in Samut Sakhon. Atris was released last September after serving his prison sentence.
The other two men, Meliad Farah, Hassan el-Hajj Hassan, are accused in the deadly 2012 bombing targeting Israeli tourists at the airport at Burgas, Bulgaria.
The State Department statement said the three men now are "specially designated global terrorists."
The terror designation makes it illegal for US citizens to engage in any transactions with the three men, and freezes any property they might possess within the United States.
All three men are Lebanese by birth, but Farah was identified as an Australian national, while Hassan el-Hajj Hassan is Canadian.
Atris, who married a Swedish woman in order to obtain a European passport to travel several times to Thailand from 2010 to 2012, is believed to have returned to Lebanon after his release from the Klong Prem prison, the State Department said.
Farah and Hassan were placed on the list for their alleged role in the July 2012 suicide attack on a bus as the airport in Burgas, Bulgaria that killed six people, including five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian citizen.
Atris was identified in the statement as a member of Hezbollah's overseas terrorism unit.
He was arrested in late 2012 in Bangkok as a suspect in a plot to carry out a bombing in Bangkok. Under interrogation, he admitted he had bought and stockpiled more than 3,000 kilogrammes of explosives.
He was sentenced early in 2013 to two years and eight months in prison for illegal possession of explosives. He concluded his sentence and was released last September.
Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based Shiite group, is backed financially and politically by Iran. It is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States.