Hunt for runaway bomber
Third man filmed with two bombers as same group appears behind Brussels, Paris attacks
brussels — Belgian police were on Thursday hunting for a third man filmed with two Daesh suicide bombers at Brussels airport as evidence piled up that the same terror network was involved in the deadly Paris attacks last November.
Pressure was mounting on Europe to improve cooperation against terrorism in the wake of Tuesday’s bombings in Brussels, which killed at least 31 people and injured 270.
French Prime Minister Manuel Valls led calls for a “strong European response”, but officials say many states, including France, withhold their most cherished data despite a mantra of willingness to share intelligence.
The chief surviving suspect linking the Paris and Brussels attacks, French national Salah Abdeslam, 26, arrested in the Belgian capital last week, was remanded in custody until April 7 with two other suspects. Correcting an earlier statement, the public prosecutor said Abdeslam, who is in detention in a prison in Bruges in western Belgium, did not appear in person.
His lawyer, Sven Mary, who re- quested the adjournment, said Abdeslam was no longer opposed to being extradited to France.
“Turkey’s president criticised Belgium for failing to track Ibrahim El Bakraoui, a convicted armed robber whom it expelled last year and who blew himself up at the air- port on Tuesday an hour before his brother Khalid, a fellow convict, killed about 20 people at Maelbeek metro station in the city centre.
Security sources told Belgian media the other suicide bomber at the airport was Najim Laachraoui, a veteran Belgian fighter in Syria suspected of making explosive belts for November’s Paris attacks, who also detonated a suitcase bomb at the airport.
The third suspect captured on airport security cameras pushing a baggage trolley into the departures hall alongside Laachraoui and Ibrahim El Bakraoui is now the target of a police manhunt. He has not been named.
The bespectacled man wearing a cream jacket and a black hat ran out of the terminal, federal prosecutors said, and a third suitcase bomb, the biggest of the three, exploded later as bomb disposal experts were clearing the area, causing no casualties.
Public broadcaster RTBF said investigators now believed a second bomber was involved in the metro attack close to European Commission headquarters. The man was spotted on security cameras carrying a heavy bag. —