Authorities have been frantically seeking the “man in the hat” ever since he was filmed alongside the two bombers just before the airport attack that killed 16 people.
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Police investigating the Brussels attacks are trying to find out if a terror suspect arrested in the Belgian capital is the “man in the hat” who escaped after the airport bombings.
The prosecutor’s spokesman identified two other suspects arrested on Friday as Osama K., who went by the alias of Naim Al Ahmed, and Herve B.M. Three others, including one whose arrest was confirmed Saturday, were unnamed.
“After being confronted with the results of the different expert examinations, he confessed his presence at the crime scene”, the federal prosecutor said in a statement.
They are all accused of “participating in terrorist acts” linked to the Brussels bombings. “He said he had thrown his jacket in a trash can and then sold his hat”, Le Soir newspaper cited the prosecutor’s statement as saying.
The 31-year-old Belgian-Moroccan petty criminal had been suspected of being involved in the Paris and Brussels attacks but his precise role was unclear. The arrests may help investigators unravel the links between the attacks and IS, the radical Muslim group that controls territory in both Iraq and Syria.
On March 15, a raid on a house in Brussels left one wanted militant dead and put police on the trail of Abdeslam, who, with Abrini, rented accommodation for the Paris attackers and whose brother had blown himself up at a cafe on November 13.
Belgian prosecutors admitted Friday that Abrini’s fingerprints were found at an apartment in Schaerbeek that investigators raided March 22 after a tip from the taxi driver who picked up the attackers and drove them to the airport.
Abrini was also believed to have travelled to Syria, where his younger brother died in 2014 in the Islamic State’s Francophone brigade.
Local television stations aired footage purportedly of Abrini’s arrest, showing a man pinned to the ground by several armed plain-clothed police who then bundled him into an unmarked auto.
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“He also tried to recruit people in Malmo”, Ranstorp told The Associated Press. Brussels remains under the second-highest terror alert, meaning an attack is considered likely.
