The Brussels court in chambers took the liberty of extending the arrest warrant for Youssef E.A., the eighth suspect investigation into the Brussels attacks on March 22nd, who police arrested on June 17th. The man remains charged by the judge for participating in terrorist group activities, terrorist assassinations and attempted terrorist assassinations, whether indeed as the perpetrator, co-perpetrator or accomplice.
This all forms part of the extensive investigation by the Federal Prosecutor's Office into the Zaventem and Brussels attacks. The Federal Prosecutor's Office clearly stated this on Wednesday.
Youssef E.A., now the eighth suspect into the investigations into the March 22nd attacks, was working at Zaventem airport. The man, apparently a childhood friend of Khalid El Bakraoui, somehow had direct access to planes on the tarmac.
Youssef E.A. was also the friend of another suspect, Ali El Haddad Asufi, and is suspected of meeting these two individuals several times, in particular, in the flat in Etterbeek where the attack carried out in the Brussels metro was so meticulously organized.
Messages from a USB stick belonging to Khalid El Bakraoui, the suicide bomber in the Maelbeek metro station, have now been discovered on his computer. These messages stress, in particular, the point that flights to the US, Russia and Israel regularly take off every Tuesday from Zaventem.
The three terrorists at Zaventem on March 22nd were, intending to blow themselves up in the queues for flights to these destinations. Thus Najim Laachraoui and Ibrahim El Bakraoui duly did, whilst the third man, (the so-called “man in the hat”) Mohamed Abrini, bottled out and took flight, jettisoning his explosive device.
Youssef E.A.'s computer also contained a message from October 2015 stating, somewhat worryingly, that “one of our brothers would die in action on March 22nd 2016.”
(Source: Belga)
