Belgian suicide attacker ID’d as Paris bomb maker

Inquiry has widened to encompass probes in France, Germany, Spain, Netherlands

BRUSSELS— One of two men who blew themselves up at Brussels airport on Tuesday was a bomb maker who had helped produce two suicide vests used in the attacks that killed 130 people in and around Paris on Nov. 13, Belgian authorities said Friday. The bomb maker — Najim Laachraoui, 24, a Belgian citizen who went to Syria in February 2013 — was an accomplice of Salah Abdeslam, 26, captured in Belgium last week after a four-month global manhunt and charged with murder. Abdeslam is suspected of being the sole surviving direct participant in the Paris attacks and his arrest appears to have accelerated the plot that culminated in the attack on Brussels.

On Dec. 10, in a Schaerbeek apartment, investigators found bombmaking equipment, a fingerprint of Abdeslam and Laachraoui’s DNA. On Monday, three days after Abdeslam was captured in Molenbeek, where he grew up, authorities sought help finding Laachraoui.

It was too late. At 7:58 a.m. Tuesday, he blew himself up at Brussels airport, along with another suicide bomber, Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29. News agencies had widely reported Laachraoui’s death, but officials awaited DNA results before confirming the news. Friday, it became clear that Laachraoui was a crucial link between Paris and Brussels.

As Belgian authorities announced arrests in Brussels, the inquiry into the bombings that devastated the Belgian capital widened to encompass investigations in France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands.

Thursday, French authorities arrested Reda Kriket, an operative for Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL. According to court records, Kriket was a financier for the group and travelled to Syria in late 2014. Kriket was known to the security services in both France and Belgium and was named in a 2015 court proceeding along with Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who was the on-the-ground chief planner of the Paris attacks.

Kriket was convicted in France in absentia in July for terrorist activities and possession of stolen goods, and was part of a circle of militants that included Abaaoud.

The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said Kriket had been involved in the “advanced stages” of a new terrorist plot.

The three men arrested in Belgium on Friday were being questioned about possible ties to Kriket.

Also Thursday, police in Dusseldorf, 190 kilometres east of Brussels, arrested a 28-year-old German long known to the authorities for having ties to Islamist extremists in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state, to prevent him from fleeing to Syria, the state prosecutor said.

Turkey deported the German man and one of the Brussels suicide bombers — Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, who blew himself up in the subway — to the Netherlands last year, German media and security officials said.

German news media reported on Friday that federal police arrested a 28-year-old Moroccan during a routine identity check on Wednesday at a train station in Giessen, in the west of the country. The suspect has a criminal record in Germany and Italy, the reports said, and had papers on him indicating that he had been hospitalized for an unexplained injury on March 18, the same day that Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels.

Further investigation led authorities to suspect that the man may have links to the attackers in Brussels, including a text message on his phone with the word “fin,” French for “end,” received on Tuesday, shortly before the attacks in Brussels, the public broadcaster ARD reported. A further message contained the name Khalid El Bakraoui, according to Der Spiegel, the news weekly.

Spanish and Dutch media reported that European intelligence officials were searching for Naim al-Hamed, a 28-year-old Syrian, as part of the Brussels investigations. Hamed was said to be linked to Laachraoui, Khalid El Bakraoui and a third suspect, Mohamed Abrini.

Belgium has come under criticism for failures in intelligence, law enforcement and information-sharing that have allowed Brussels to become a hub of terrorist planning in Europe.

Officials have acknowledged that they should have acted on an alert last year from Turkey about Ibrahim El Bakraoui. He was detained in Turkey near the border with Syria on suspicion of terrorist activity, but Belgian authorities never followed up. El Bakraoui was deported to the Netherlands at his request.

In addition, the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office said Khalid El Bakraoui had been sought in connection with the terrorist attacks in Paris on Nov. 13.

French authorities arrested Reda Kriket, an operative for Daesh. According to court records, Kriket was a financier for the group.