Airport bomber monitored by police since last summer

Mohammed Abrini, the third suspect in the terrorist attacks on Brussels Airport on 22 March, who fled the scene without detonating his bomb, was under police surveillance since July of last year, the French newspaper Le Parisien has reported.

In June of last year, Abrini, otherwise known as “the man in the hat”, was released from prison, where he had served time for petty crimes. Shortly thereafter, he flew to Istanbul. On his return to Belgium, he was questioned and claimed he had been on a tourist visit to Turkey before flying to the UK and then returning home via Paris.

Police believed he had made – or attempted to make – a trip to Syria, where his younger brother had fought and died in 2014. They placed him under surveillance, using a static camera outside his home. The footage was only periodically monitored because of a lack of manpower.

The tapes show Abrini coming and going, often in the company of his friend Salah Abdeslam, who took part in the Paris attacks but also decided at the last minute not to blow himself up. At the time of the surveillance, Abdeslam was not considered a person of interest.

Only after the Paris attacks, when the movements of the two men were retraced, did it become clear they had been working on preparations for finding safe houses for the Paris attackers and providing other logistical support, including hired cars.

Abdeslam’s brother Brahim blew himself up in a Paris restaurant, injuring 15 people. Abdeslam himself was the subject of a Europe-wide manhunt and was arrested in Molenbeek on 18 March, four days before the attacks on Brussels Airport and the metro.

Photo: Security camera shows Abrini (left) and Abdeslam in a petrol station north of Paris two days before the November attacks ©BELGA/AFP