Brussels bomber identified as guard of foreign IS hostages

One of the Brussels airport bombers has been identified as one of the prison guards of Islamic State hostages by four French journalists kidnapped and held in Syria from 2013 to 2014.

Najim Laachraoui, one of the Brussels airport bombers, has been identified as the guard known as ‘Abou Idriss’.

One of the journalists, Nicolas Henin, ‘has formally identified’ Abou Idriss as being Najim Laachraoui, his lawyer Marie-Laure Ingouf said, confirming reports in French newspapers.

Belgian prosecutors have said Laachraoui travelled to Syria in February 2013 to join the IS.

There was no further trace of the Belgian national until he was registered under a false name at the border between Austria and Hungary in September 2015.

Laachraoui, 24, was one of the two suicide bombers who struck Brussels airport on March 22, while a third attacker blew himself up at on a metro train, with the two attacks killing 31 people.

Prosecutors have also linked him to November’s attacks in Paris in which 130 people died, saying his DNA was found on a suicide vest and a piece of cloth at the Bataclan concert hall where 90 people were killed.

Police also found his DNA on explosives used at the Stade de France, leading investigators to believe he was the bomb maker in both the French and Belgian attacks.