Brussels attacks: Police nab missing suspects

Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini has confessed to being “the man in the hat” at Brussels airport.

Abdeslam, left, and Abrini on November 11 fill up a Renault Clio used in the Paris attacks at Ressons.

The attackers who struck Brussels on March 22 initially planned a second assault on France, Belgium’s Federal Prosecution Office said last night.

However, the perpetrators were “surprised by the speed of the progress in the ongoing investi­gation” and decided to rush an ­attack on Brussels instead, the ­office said in a statement.

It did not give any details of the initial plot or its targets and the ­office could not be reached for ­further comment.

Two suicide bombers killed 16 people at Brussels airport on March 22. A subsequent explosion at Maelbeek subway station killed another 16 people on the same morning.

Investigators have found intimate links between the cell behind those attacks and the group that killed 130 people in Paris on November 13.

Last night’s statement confirms what many have suspected: the series of raids and arrests in the week leading up to the Brussels attacks — including the capture of the ey fugitive from the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam — pushed the killers into action.

Belgian police detained four men in Brussels raids at the weekend, charged with participating in “terrorist murders” and the ­“activities of a terrorist group” in relation to the Brussels attacks.

One of them, Mohamed Abrini, has also been charged in relation to the Paris attacks, prosecutors said.

Abrini has acknowledged being the “man in the hat” seen alongside the two suicide bombers who blew themselves up at Brussels airport, officials said.

Surveillance footage has also placed him in the convoy with the attackers who headed to Paris ahead of the November massacre.

“He explained having thrown away his vest in a garbage bin and having sold his hat afterwards,” said prosecutors.

“This is an important step ­forward,” a source close to the ­investigation said yesterday.

According to a report in Belgian daily L’Echo, not ­confirmed by prosecutors, Abrini confessed that he actually wanted to return to Paris for another ­attack, but was spooked by the ­investigation and hastily decided to carry out the Brussels ­bombings. He was the last known suspect at large.

Abrini, a Belgian of Moroccan origin, was a childhood friend of Brussels brothers Salah and Brahim Abdeslam, both suspects in the Paris attacks, and he had ties to Abdelhamid Abbaoud, the Paris attackers’ ringleader who died in a French police raid soon afterwards.

Brahim Abdeslam blew himself up in the Paris bombings while Salah Abdeslam was ­arrested in Brussels on March 18 after a four-month manhunt.

The other suspects charged at the weekend were identified as Osama Krayem, who left the Swedish city of Malmo to fight in Syria and was described by one relative as having been “brainwashed”. Also charged were Herve B. M., reported to be a Rwandan national, and Bilal E. M.

The latest arrests strengthened the theory that the same cell ­carried out both France and Bel­gium’s worst terror outrages, claimed by Islamic State.

The recent days’ developments represent a rare success for Belgian authorities, who have been criticised for bungling the bombings investigation.

Despite the progress, Brussels remains under the second-highest terror alert, meaning an attack is considered likely.

“There are perhaps other cells that are still active on our territory,” Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon told RTL television on Saturday.

In a separate development, Brussels’ STIB transport network announced that 12 stations closed since the attacks would reopen today. Eighteen of the capital’s 69 stations remain closed, including Maelbeek.

AP, AFP