Suspect nabbed by Belgium may be third Brussels airport bomber
Faycal C., charged with terrorist murder, believed to be man seen on video surveillance footage in light coat and black hat
BRUSSELS (AFP) — A suspect named as Faycal C. has been charged with terrorist murder and police are trying to confirm if he is the third Brussels airport suicide bomber who fled the scene, a source close to the probe said Saturday.
“He has been charged with taking part in a terrorist group, terrorist murder and attempted terrorist murder,” the prosecutor said in a statement, naming the suspect as Faycal C, one of six people detained in police raids late Thursday.
Asked by AFP if Faycal C. was the fugitive captured by CCTV wearing a hat alongside the two airport suicide bombers, a source close to the inquiry said this could not yet be confirmed.
“That is a hypothesis the investigators are working on,” said the source.
Belgian media have repeatedly named the man seen on the video surveillance footage in a light coat and black hat as Faycal C. but this has not been confirmed by judicial sources.
Faycal C. was one of six people detained in three separate raids on Thursday evening and is the first to be charged in Tuesday’s airport and metro bombings, in which 31 people were killed and 300 injured.
A second suspect named as Rabah N. linked to a foiled plot in France was charged with taking part in terrorist activities.
A third man is being held on similar charges.
A suspect shot in the leg Friday in Schaerbeek is being held for another 24 hours as investigations continue.
The government meanwhile came in for a torrent of criticism, with key ministers on the back foot saying they had done everything possible to prevent Tuesday’s attacks.
Many believe it has not done enough to stop young Belgian fighters going to Syria to join Islamic State — which claimed the attacks — and from where they return home battle-hardened and more extremist than before.
“Attacks, tens of dead, hundreds hurt, tears, raids, a political crisis, the capital under siege and fugitives still on the run while (key Paris suspect) Salah Abdeslam says nothing in prison,” wrote Christophe Berti in a front page editorial for Le Soir daily.
“It is an endless nightmare for a country turned upside down,” Berti said.
On Friday, a series of raids produced three arrests in connection with what French authorities said was an imminent new attack.
President Francois Hollande said a jihadist network which hit both Paris and Brussels was being “destroyed” but also warned that the threat remained and everyone must be on guard.
The Belgian government has admitted “errors” and two ministers offered to resign after Turkey said it had arrested and deported Ibrahim El Bakraoui, who blew himself up in the airport attack.
Belgium had ignored warnings that he was a “foreign terrorist fighter,” it said.
Ibrahim and his brother Khalid, the suicide bomber in the metro attack, were also on a US counter-terrorism watch list, CNN reported.
Ibrahim was on the list even before the November Paris attacks while Khalid was added soon after. Prosecutors have also confirmed Khalid was the subject of an international warrant over the Paris attacks.
European authorities are under huge pressure to better coordinate the tracking of homegrown extremists and fighters returning from Syria, as evidence grows of a thriving jihadist network straddling France and Belgium.
A Belgian parliamentary commission on Friday questioned the ministers for justice, foreign affairs, and the interior on how Ibrahim El Bakraoui had managed to slip past the authorities.
The ministers said the information from Ankara was vague while a Belgian police officer at the embassy in Turkey had “blundered”.
French police said Friday they had foiled a terror strike in France by 34-year-old Reda Kriket — a man previously convicted in Belgium in a terror case alongside Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud — after arresting him and discovering explosives at his home.
The Brussels raids Friday saw one suspect shot in the leg at a tram stop in broad daylight in the capital’s Schaerbeek district, where police earlier this week found a bomb factory linked to the airport and metro attacks.
Belgian prosecutors meanwhile said that the DNA of second airport bomber Najim Laachraoui was found on a suicide vest and a piece of cloth at the Bataclan concert hall where 90 people were killed during November’s Paris attacks, and on a bomb at the Stade de France stadium.
A huge manhunt is still under way for at least two suspects — one of the airport attackers whose bomb failed to go off and another man seen in the metro with Khalid El Bakraoui just before he detonated his bomb.
Investigators also say Khalid rented an apartment in Brussels used by Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested in the Belgian capital on March 18.
The federal prosecutor said Friday that Abdeslam had “invoked his right to silence” and has not spoken to investigators since a few brief interviews the day after his arrest.
Speaking in Brussels on Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry said he stood by the Belgian people, echoing their backing for the United States after the 9/11 attacks.
“Then, voices across Europe declared, ‘Je suis Americain’. Now, we declare, ‘Je suis Bruxellois’ and ‘Ik ben Brussel,’ Kerry said in French and Flemish, the country’s two main languages, after meeting Belgian premier Charles Michel.
Harrowing stories continued to emerge from survivors of the attacks, in which people of around 40 nationalities were killed or wounded.
Briton David Dixon, 51, who lived in Brussels, texted his aunt after the airport blasts to say he was safe, but happened to be on the metro system when Khalid blew himself up, British media said.
Grieving Belgians continued to gather in a central Brussels square carpeted with flowers and tributes to the dead and wounded as the country tries to come to terms with the tragedy.
