“Salah Abdeslam has asked me to inform you that he wishes to leave for France as quickly as possible”, Sven Mary said on Thursday in comments broadcast on BFM TV, speaking from Brussels.
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Belgian prosecutors have said at least four people were involved in Tuesday’s attacks on the Brussels airport and a subway train, including brothers Ibrahim and Khalid El Bakraoui, identified as suicide bombers.
Attackers carried out bombings in the airport and a metro station in the Belgian capital on Tuesday, killing at least 30 people and injuring approximately 260.
The chief suspect in last year’s deadly Paris terror attacks is due to appear in court in Brussels, amid increasing signs that the same cell of the so-called “Islamic State” group was behind attacks in both cities.
Laachraoui, 25, now said to have killed himself in the airport blasts as well, was a veteran Islamist fighter in Syria and is also suspected of making explosive belts for November’s Paris attacks.
A third man seen with Laachraoui and Ibrahim El Bakraoui remains unidentified and on the run after his suitcase bomb failed to detonate properly, according to Belgian federal prosecutors.
The raids unfolded in the same area where an Islamic State flag, as well as a bomb containing nails, were found in a flat – hours after the Brussels terror attacks left 31 people dead and 316 injured.
The day before the Brussels attacks, Belgian police appealed to the public for help finding Laachraoui, whom they described as an accomplice of Abdeslam. That, the newspaper said, was more than a year before Belgium issued a notice for his arrest.
Laachraoui is also closely connected with Salah Abdeslam, one of the ring-leaders of the Paris attacks who was just arrested last Friday.
Meanwhile, pressure has mounted on Europe to improve cooperation against terrorism, prompting the European Union (EU) interior and justice ministers to hold emergency talks on a joint response to Tuesday’s bombings.
Details now emerging show that the three Brussels attackers were known to Belgian authorities but somehow able to slip through security.
According to the report, there were three separate apparent connections to the Paris attacks. His brother, Ibrahim, 29, was one of the attackers at the airport.
Broken parole Belgian media reported that the younger el-Bakraoui brother, Khalid, had broken the terms of his parole in December but prosecutors had allowed him to walk free.
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There is mounting evidence that they were part of the same network that slaughtered 130 in Paris on November 13.
