Pair linked to Paris attacks may be behind Belgium blasts
Two suspected terrorists named by Belgian police as accomplices to November’s Paris attacks are likely to be the focus of investigations as to who was responsible for the triple blasts at Brussels’ airport and subway. Najim Laachraoui and Mohamed Abrini were on the run following police raids that led to the capture of Salah Abdeslam, the lead Paris attacker, in Brussels on Friday. One theory is that they may have launched Tuesday’s attacks in Brussels on the assumption that the police interrogation of Abdeslam would have given police leads as to their own whereabouts. Laachraoui, 24, is thought to have been one of the main bombmaking experts for the Paris attacks, with his DNA found on several suicide vests recovered at the Stade de France and the Bataclan Theatre. He had reportedly gone to Syria in February 2013 and returned to Europe under the false name of Soutane Kayal, which he used to travel to Hungary in September to meet up with Salah Abdeslam and then move on to France. It is thought he posed as a migrant fleeing the Syrian conflict. His DNA was also later found during police investigations in the Belgian town of Auvelais and the Brussels district of Schaerbeek. Mohamed Abrini, a 30-year-old Belgian national of Moroccan origin, was seen with Abdeslam — a childhood friend — just before the November attacks. He was filmed at a gas station on the road to Paris driving a rented Renault Clio that was used two days later in the massacre which killed 130 people. Abrini then travelled to Paris with the convoy of gunmen and bombers. In the days before the attacks, he was spotted on CCTV footage at a service station in northern France buying soft drinks in the company of Abdeslam and at the wheel of the rented black Clio that was later used in the attacks.