Brussels bombers meant to target France, says Belgian prosecutor

The terrorist cell that killed 32 people in attacks on Brussels last month had initially intended to strike France again after carrying out the Paris attacks, but swiftly decided to strike closer to home as police closed in, Belgian prosecutors said on Sunday.

Belgium’s federal state prosecutor said on Sunday that “numerous elements” in the investigation showed the group “initially had the intention to strike in France again” following November’s Islamic State attacks on Paris that killed 130.

The prosecutor said the group was “surprised by the speed of the progress in the ongoing investigation” and so “urgently took the decision to strike in Brussels”.

Two suicide bombers killed 16 people at Brussels airport, and moments later a suicide bomb at Brussels’ Maelbeek subway station killed another 16, on 22 March.

Investigations into the Islamic State attacks in Paris have found clear links between the cell behind the Brussels attacks and the group that prepared and carried out November’s attacks in Paris. Many of the perpetrators lived in Belgium, including surviving suspects who managed to evade police for more than four months.

Belgian prosecutors announced this weekend that Mohamed Abrini, 31, a key suspect wanted in connection with November’s Paris attacks, had confessed to being the third bomber at Brussels airport. Known from CCTV footage as “the man in the hat”, he left a large bag of explosives at the airport, then fled on foot. He was arrested on Friday in a police raid.

Abrini, 31, has been charged with terrorist murders, prosecutors said.

Before taking part in the Brussels bombings, Abrini had been on the run from police for four months after being identified on CCTV footage as a suspect at the wheel of a Renault Clio used by the gunmen in the Paris attacks.

The investigation has established connections between a large group of men – many of them childhood friends or brothers – who are suspected of playing roles in both the Paris and Brussels attacks, the two biggest terror attacks carried out in Europe by Isis.

Four days before the Brussels attacks, police arrested Saleh Abdeslam, who was then Europe’s most wanted man after four months on the run. Abdeslam, a French national who grew up in Brussels, is thought to be the last surviving Paris attacker.

He travelled to Paris with his childhood friend Abrini, and is believed to have driven the car used to drop off the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the Stade de France. He claim to have backed out of blowing himself up in Paris. His brother Brahim blew himself up at a Paris cafe.

He was found hiding in Molenbeek in Brussels, not far from the street where his parents lived.

A few days before his arrest, police arrived to search a flat in the Forest neighbourhood of Brussels which they thought was empty. They were met with gunfire from behind the door, and a police sniper shot one of the gunmen through a window.

The shot gunman was Mohamed Belkaïd, a 35-year-old Algerian living illegally in Belgium and known to police for a theft case in 2014. “Next to his body was a Kalashnikov, a book on Salafism and an Islamic State flag,” according to Thierry Werts, of the Belgian federal prosecutor’s office.

The four identified bombers who struck Brussels – three at the airport and one in the metro – all had links to the planning and logistics of the Paris attacks four months earlier.

Khalid el-Bakraoui, 27, who blew himself up on the Brussels metro shortly after his elder brother Ibrahim had detonated a suicide vest at Brussels airport, was suspected of playing some kind of logistics role in the Paris attacks.

Najim Laachraoui, 24, who grew up in Brussels, blew himself up at the airport. He was also a suspected Islamic State recruiter and bomb-maker whose DNA was found on two explosives belts used in the Paris attacks.

Belgian intelligence and security forces had been criticized from abroad for not doing more to dismantle the militant cell, because of its links to the Paris attacks, though as of Friday all known suspects were either in detention or dead.

Belgium maintained its second highest threat level, however, on Sunday with Prime Minister Charles Michel saying his government would remain alert.

Another main suspect who was seen alongside the suicide bomber in the Brussels metro and identified by prosecutors as Osama K was also arrested on Friday in the Belgian capital.