Police had been hunting Laachraoui since last week, suspecting him of being an accomplice of top Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested on Friday.
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Asked why Mr. Abdeslam had changed his mind, Mr. Mary said that his client understood that “the case here is just a small piece”, and that he wanted to “explain himself in France”.
Abdeslam is a key suspect in November’s Paris attacks, which left 130 people dead.
The federal prosecutor’s office in Belgium said that the arrests came during police searches in the Brussels neighborhoods of Schaerbeek in the north and Jette in the west, as well as in the center of the Belgian capital.
Belgian state broadcaster RTBF and France’s Le Monde and BFM television reported Thursday that a fifth attacker may also be at large: a man filmed by surveillance cameras in the Brussels metro on Tuesday carrying a large bag alongside Khalid El Bakraoui.
A third man in a hat and white jacket, seen on CCTV footage with Bakraoui and another unidentified suicide attacker pushing their bomb-filled bags through the departure hall shortly before the attacks, “is on the run”, Van Leeuw said.
Authorities have identified a suicide bomber who hit the Brussels subway, but are also investigating who else may have participated in that attack.
At least 31 people were killed and 271 wounded.
He has said Abdeslam “did not know” about the Brussels attacks on Tuesday, contrary to reports they were brought forward after his arrest and carried out by the terror cell he was a member of.
The first official said yesterday that Ibrahim el-Bakraoui’s initial deportation in July had been based on police suspicions that he was a militant fighter but that he had committed no crime in Turkey.
_Najim LaachraouiOfficials say Laachraoui is believed to have made the TATP-filled suicide vests used in the Paris attacks.
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Brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui are suspects in the Brussels attacks. He also said that if he takes too much time, he would end up “next to him in prison” – an apparent reference to Abdeslam the Belgian investigators believe, the official told CNN. While Ibrahim along with Najim Laachraoui targeted Brussels Zaventem Airport, Khalid denoted his explosives at Maelbeek.
