A European manhunt for the surviving terrorist of the Brussels bombings was intensified yesterday after Belgium’s embattled police force admitted they had arrested the wrong man.
In a fresh setback for Belgium’s security services, prosecutors were yesterday forced to release the Belgian man they had believed to be the suicide bombers’ accomplice and concede that the main suspect for last week’s attacks remained at large.
The death toll from last week’s attacks has risen to 35 after four people succumbed to their injuries in hospital, Maggie De Block, the Belgian Health Minister, said yesterday.
The toll excludes the three suicide bombers who also died after bombs were detonated at Zeventem airport and on the Brussels metro.
In a sign of the violence of the explosion, three of the victims have yet to be identified, Mrs De Block said.
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Security officials have continued with a sweeping crackdown on Islamists across the continent, with anti-terror units carrying out arrests linked to alleged cells in France, Belgium and the Netherlands.
Despite dozens of police raids on flats and houses in Belgium and elsewhere over the past week, Faysal Cheffou, 31, was the only person to be arrested in connection with the bombings, but he was freed yesterday.
Investigators had mistakenly believed that he was a man wearing a hat seen in photographs taken from CCTV footage of the airport before the attacks, filmed pushing a trolley next to the bombers.
The suspect left a bag containing explosives at the airport last Tuesday, fleeing as the two Islamists with him, Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, detonated bombs. El Bakraoui’s brother, Khalid, was the suicide bomber who blew himself up on the underground.
However, as it emerged that detectives appear to have little idea as to the suspect’s identity - now one of Europe’s most wanted criminals - they released the full CCTV film from the airport in an attempt to obtain a new lead.
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Mr Cheffou’s release is the latest setback in a series of embarassing episodes for Belgian police. They were criticised for ignoring Turkey’s warnings that Ibrahim El Bakraoui was a potential terrorist, and then spending four months tracking Salah Abdeslam, the only jihadist still alive after the Paris attacks whose address they had had all along.
Officers then curtailed Abdeslam’s interrogation when he said he was tired, losing the chance to obtain information on the Brussels bombings three days later.
Initially, Belgian officers had claimed that the bombings were a hasty Islamist response to Abdeslam’s arrest in Molenbeek, Brussels, four days before the attacks.
However, that theory was undermined after a map of Zeventem Airport was discovered by Greek security officials in Athens, in an apartment occupied by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Islamist believed to have been the ring-leader of the Paris attacks last November.
The find, which emerged on Friday, appears to suggest that the airport had long been a target, and may have been chosen by Abaaoud before he was killed in a raid by French police five days after the Paris massacre.
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Security officials in Italy also said that the Brussels attacks may have been planned in Greece, as early as last summer. Khalid El Bakraoui, the underground bomber, passed through northeast Italy on his way to Greece in late July, antiterrorism officials said.
An Islamist suspect allegedly in contact with the El Bakraoui brothers was arrested in Giessen, Germany, following the Brussels attacks. Mohammed Lahlaoui was reportedly treated for a knife wound in a Brussels hospital on the day of Abdeslam’s arrest.
Amid the wide-ranging clampdown on Islamist suspects, prosecutors said three men arrested during raids in Belgium on Sunday had been charged with belonging to a terrorist group, but none were thought to have been involved in the airport or underground bombings. Police sources said they were suspected of being part of a second Islamist cell that may have been planning more attacks.
Belgian health officials said that 96 of those injured last week were still in hospital, including 55 in intensive care. A total of 32 are in centres in Belgium and France that specialise in treating severe burns.
