Paris: Several foreign journalists previously held hostage by the Islamic State in Syria have identified one of the bombers in the deadly attacks in Brussels that claimed the lives of 31 people as one of their prison guards, a news agency quoted sources close to the investigations as saying.
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Najim Laachraoui, 24, who died in the bombing at Brussels airport last month, was recognised by French journalists who had been detained by the Islamist organisation in 2013 and 2014.
Nemmouche had already been identified as a jihadi jailer in Syria by one of Ms Ingouf’s clients, Nicolas Henin.
Laachraoui was publicly identified as a suspect in the Paris attacks for the first time on March 21, only hours before the Brussels attacks.
“Laachraoui was one of the jailors of the French ex-hostages, and of other decapitated hostages, as they all shared the same cell”, she said in a statement.
They described Laachraoui as less violent than Nemmouche, and said he occasionally asked them “scientific questions he expected them to answer”.
Laachraoui, a young mechanical engineering graduate, would have been among the group’s earliest recruits, leaving Belgium in February 2013. However, the newspaper said he was not as brutal with the hostages as Mehdi Nemmouche, a Frenchman who after leaving Syria would later kill four people in an attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels. He was stopped on the Austria-Hungary border and was using a false identity.
In this image provided by the Belgian Federal Police in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 of three men who are suspected of taking part in the attacks at Belgium’s Zaventem Airport.
The same man has been associated with the Paris attacks that killed 130 people in November.
Prosecutors say that his DNA was found on a suicide vest and a piece of clothing that was found at the Bataclan concert hall, where 90 people lost their lives.
Najim Laachraoui (left) seen with fellow suicide bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui at Brussels airport shortly before they detonated suicide bombs on March 22.
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The 25-year-old is believed to have resurfaced in Europe around two months before the Paris attacks.
