Terror group which launched Brussels bombings planned new attack on Paris

Terror group which launched Brussels bombings planned new attack on Paris - prosecutors

Sunday, April 10, 2016

Confession: Mohamed Abrini has admitted to being the 'man in white' who was seen with two suicide bombers at Zaventem airport on March 22 just before the attack that killed 16 people. Photo/DAILY MAIL

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Brussels and Paris terror attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini has admitted that he had been planning to carry out a new terror attack on Paris but switched to targeting Brussels due to the police search.

The former baker, who admitted to being the 'man in white,' was seen with two suicide bombers at a Belgian airport. He told prosecutors that the original plan was to hit Paris again but the intensity of the police investigation led the group of terrorists to target Brussels airport and metro station.

Abrini, 31, who is thought to have played a major role in the Paris massacre that killed 130 in November and the Brussels bombings in which 32 people died last month, was arrested yesterday and has since been charged with 'terrorist murders'.

The terror suspect is also believed to have met British Islamists and photographed sites in Manchester, Birmingham and London, with the intention of targeting the UK.

After leaving the airport, Abrini threw his light coat in a dust bin and later sold his hat, prosecutors added.

Prosecutors charged four people, including Abrini, with terrorist activity for their suspected roles in the Brussels bombings and Paris attacks. They were arrested yesterday, along with two others who were later released.

Abrini, Osama Krayem, Bilal El Makhoukh and a Rwandan man known as Herve BM have been charged with participating in "terrorist murders" and the "activities of a terrorist group".

Krayem, a Swedish national, is known to have left the Swedish city of Malmo to fight in Syria.

The prosecutor's office accuses him of being the second person present at the attack on the Maelbeek subway station in Brussels and of being at a shopping mall where the luggage used in the airport attack was purchased.

El Makhoukhi was convicted in January last year for being involved in Sharia4Belgium, a now disbanded organisation that recruited people to go fight alongside jihadist organisations in Syria and Iraq, Belgium's Justice Minister Koen Geens said.

Originally sentenced to five years in prison, with three years suspended, he was allowed to serve his remaining term at home under electronic monitoring and was released last month, Geens said.

"He was under electronic supervision and his sentence ended on March 15," Geens said at a government news conference.

El Makhoukhi was convicted last year following his return to Belgium after losing a leg while fighting in Syria.

Abrini has been on
Europe's most wanted list since being identified on CCTV video in a car with recently arrested ISIS logistics chief Salah Abdeslam two days before the Paris atrocities.

Prosecutors said fingerprints and DNA from Abrini had been found in a Renault Clio used in the Paris attacks, and in an apartment in the Forest area of the Belgian capital that was used by Abdeslam as a hideout until police stumbled upon it.

Abrini was arrested yesterday at the Petillon Metro station in the Anderlecht district, which was home to several other suspects linked to both the Paris and Brussels attacks.

A video clip showing a suspect - believed to be Abrini - being pinned down on a pavement by several armed plain-clothed police wearing balaclavas emerged yesterday.

Abrini, 31, was described on his international arrest warrant four months ago as "dangerous and probably armed".

His detention means that all of the people investigators believe planned or took part directly in the Paris attacks are either dead or in custody.

The Belgian of Moroccan origin is also thought to have travelled to the UK last year, visiting Birmingham.

He took photographs of an unidentified football stadium while his ISIS cell began planning the attacks in France, according to intelligence source.

Abrini was a childhood friend of Abdeslam, another Paris attacker caught last month in Brussels who is currently awaiting extradition to France.

Their families used to be next-door neighbours in the notorious Brussels suburb of Molenbeek.

Abrini travelled by car with Abdeslam and his brother Brahim – who blew himself up during the Paris attacks – on November 10 last year.

The trio made two round trips between Brussels and Paris to rent hideouts for the Paris attackers.

Abrini then travelled to Paris with the convoy of gunmen and bombers.

In the days before the Paris attacks, he was spotted on CCTV footage at a service station in northern France.

He was seen buying soft drinks in the company of Abdeslam and at the wheel of the rented black Clio that was later used in the attacks.

He disappeared the day before the gunmen and suicide-bombers attacked the French capital.

It is thought that he may have coordinated the attacks from a distance – his relatives have said he was in Brussels on the night of the attacks.

Abrini is believed to have given up training as a welder aged 18 and

begun gravitating towards extremists.

He was known to police for thefts and drug-related offences.

In 2014, his brother Souleymane, 20, died in Syria while fighting in an Islamist militia headed by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the ringleader of the Paris attacks who was killed by police in November.

As well as Birmingham, in the year before the Paris attacks, Abrini had travelled to Istanbul and perhaps Syria, as well as UK, Germany and Morocco.

Reports of his arrest came just 24 hours after Belgian prosecutors issued dramatic new CCTV footage showing the ISIS militant dubbed the 'man in white' - now known to be Abrini - fleeing the Brussels bombings.

They show him leaving Brussels Airport on foot moments before twin blasts killed 16 people in the terminal.

He is then seen walking to the nearby town of Zaventem and then into Brussels as a second blast rocked the city's Metro station, killing another 16 victims.

They also reveal for the first time that he discarded his infamous white jacket, from which he earned his nickname, and show him talking on a mobile phone moments before he disappeared.

Underneath, the fugitive's shirt appears bright blue with dark patches on the elbows. He was also wearing dark trousers and brown shoes with large white soles.

New CCTV: The Man in White's airport journey reconstructed

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