Mohamed Abrini, a key figure in the Paris
attacks, on Saturday April 9, confessed to being the man in the hat seen with the
suicide bombers at Brussels airport. He has been charged with "terrorist
murders", Belgian prosecutors said.
Another man was also charged
with “terrorist murders" over the Brussels metro bombing as
investigators linked more clearly than ever the militants involved in
both France and Belgium’s worst ever terror outrages, claimed by ISIL.
Two
other men suspected of helping them were charged with complicity
following raids across Brussels on Friday that netted all four. Two
others arrested with Abrini were released on Saturday.
"The
investigating judge specialised in terrorism cases who is in charge of
the investigation into the Paris attacks ... has put Mohamed Abrini in
detention," the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said. "He is charged
with participation in the activities of a terrorist group and terrorist
murders."
"Abrini
is indeed the third man present at the Brussels national airport
attacks" the prosecutors said later after they confronted him with
expert examinations that included closed circuit television footage.
“He
confessed his presence at the crime scene. He explained having thrown
away his vest [jacket] in a garbage bin and having sold his hat
afterward," the prosecutor’s office said.
Abrini was arrested in
the Brussels neighbourhood of Anderlecht. Local television stations
aired footage of Abrini’s arrest, showing a man pinned to the ground by
several armed plain-clothed police who then bundled him into an unmarked
car.
Abrini, a Belgian of Moroccan origin and the last known
Paris suspect still at large, was seen at a petrol station north of
Paris two days before the attacks with Salah Abdeslam who is now
awaiting extradition to France.
Belgian police on Thursday
released a video showing a man wearing a hat and light-coloured jacket
who was seen with the two suicide bombers in the departure hall.
While
they blew themselves up, he fled and made his way on foot back to
central Brussels, appearing calm and composed before disappearing.
The
two airport bombers have been identified as Ibrahim El Bakraoui and
Najim Laachraoui, believed to be the cell’s bomb maker. Ibrahim’s
brother Khalid blew himself up at Maalbeek metro station not far from
the European Union quarter in Brussels.
Osama
Krayem has been identified as the man seen on closed circuit television
with Khalid El Bakraoui moments before the latter blew himself up at
the Malbeek station, prosecutors said. Krayem is also the one caught on
camera buying bags used to conceal the bombs set off by the two airport
bombers, they added.
The
investigating judge has “charged him with participation in the
activities of a terrorist group and terrorist murders," the statement
said.
Swedish media said Osama Krayem, 23, who grew up in the
southern city of Malmo, and published photographs of him holding a
Kalashnikov assault rifle in front of an ISIL flag said to have been
taken in Syria.
In both the Paris and Brussels massacres, several
of the suspects came from the largely-immigrant Molenbeek neighbourhood
of Brussels, including Abdelhamid Abaaoud, said to have played a key
role in Paris, along with Salah Abdeslam who was arrested on March 18.
The
Brussels attacks killed 32 people while the November 13 Paris automatic
rifle attacks and suicide bombings killed 130 people across the French
capital. Hundreds more were wounded in each event.
Abdeslam
himself took part in the Paris attacks but unlike his brother Brahim,
who blew himself up, he escaped and fled back to Brussels, eluding a
vast police dragnet for four months.
The Belgian authorities have
faced intense criticism over their handling of the attacks as it emerged
many of the suspects were known to police for a long time.
Critics
say the government has not done enough to prevent radicalisation of
Muslim youth in areas such as Molenbeek, with Belgium proportionately
the biggest source in the European Union of foreign fighters going to
join ISIL in Syria. Evidence linking the attacks in the two cities deepened further Saturday.
Another
suspect who was arrested on Friday was identified as 25-year-old
Rwandan national Herve B.M., who is “suspected of having offered
assistance" to both Abrini and Krayem, prosecutors said. He is charged
with participating in the activities of a terrorist group and
“complicity in terrorist murders," it said.
It
added that 27-year-old Bilal E.M. was charged with participating in
"the activities of a terrorist group and complicity in terrorist
murders" over suspicions he helped Abrini and Krayem.
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