Reports: Paris bombmaker one of two suicide bombers at Brussels airport
The man suspected of building bombs used in the Paris attacks last year was one of two suicide bombers who died in the Brussels Airport attack, multiple media outlets reported Wednesday.
The Associated Press, citing unnamed European authorities, reported officials identified the bomber as Najim Laachraoui based on DNA samples from the airport blast. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to divulge details of the Belgian investigation.
The Washington Post, citing an Arab intelligence official and a European intelligence official who also requested anonymity, also reported the identification.
The disclosure is the first evidence linking the deadly rampage in Paris that killed 130 in November to Tuesday's attacks in Brussels that left more than 30 dead.
Earlier Wednesday, prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said Ibrahim El Bakraoui, 29, was the other airport suicide bomber and his brother, Khalid, 27, was the subway suicide bomber who detonated his device an hour later at a downtown metro station.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey deported Ibrahim last year because it suspected him of being a militant. He was deported to the Netherlands at his request after his native Belgium failed to establish a connection to terrorism, Erdoğan said. Both nations were notified, he added.
Khalid in recent months was the subject of an Interpol "red notice," an international alert saying he was wanted on terrorism charges. An excerpt of the notice made public by the international policing agency said Khalid had dual citizenship in Belgium and the Bahamas and spoke French and Arabic.
Video footage from the airport shows Ibrahim walking between two other men at Brussels Airport shortly before the fatal blasts. Authorities said earlier Wednesday that the man on the left was the second suicide bomber but they had not yet identified him. The reports of Laachraoui's identification would make him that bomber.
Police are still searching for the man in the pale clothing and hat, who is believed to be a third suspect who fled the airport, leaving behind a 35-pound bomb that failed to detonate.
Van Leeuw alluded to a history of criminal activity from the El Bakraoui brothers. Multiple media outlets, including NBC, reported Ibrahim was sentenced to 9 years in prison for shooting at police with an assault rifle during a robbery. Khalid was arrested for possession of Kalashnikov rifles in 2011 and had been sentenced to 5 years for carjackings, the network reported.
One 35-pound bomb in Brussels attack failed to go off; suicide note found
Hours after Tuesday's attacks, police raiding a house in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek found explosives and an Islamic State flag. They also found a computer in a street trash can that contained a suicide note from Ibrahim, who wrote that he felt increasingly vulnerable.
“I don't know what to do, hunted everywhere, no longer safe ... I don't want to end up in a cell next to him," the note said, according to Van Leeuw. That may have been in reference to Salah Abdeslam, the Paris attacker detained in Brussels last week.
Khalid rented a Brussels residence that was raided March 15 by authorities hunting Abdeslam. Abdeslam was nabbed a few days later.
The El Bakraouis join the Abdeslam brothers (Paris), the Kouachis (Charlie Hebdo) and the Tsarnaevs (Boston), as siblings who have taken part in terrorists attacks in recent years.