#BrusselsAttacks: Two more suspects arrested

Belgian police have arrested two men in connection to the 22 March Brussels bombings that killed 32 people at the Brussels airport and Maelbeek metro station. These arrests come after they were linked to a safe house that two of the attackers used.

The two men were identified by prosecutors as Smail F and Ibrahim F. Local reports say they are brothers.

BBC News reported that police also arrested two other suspected bombers on Friday (8 April), including Mohamed Abrini. Abrini has confessed to being the "man in the hat", the third bomber at the airport that fled without detonating his device. The second man arrested in Friday's raid is Osama Krayem, who was allegedly spotted with Khalid el-Bakraoui before el-Bakraoui bombed the Maelbeek metro station.

Smail F and Ibrahim F were apparently arrested a day later and one of the brothers is thought to have rented a house in the central Etterbeek area of Brussels used by Osama Krayem and el-Bakraoui before the metro bombing. Prosecutors say Smail F was born in 1984 and Ibrahim F in 1988.

The house in Avenue des Casernes was raided on Saturday but no explosives or weapons were found.

"They are charged with participation in the activities of a terrorist group, terrorist murders and attempts to commit terrorist murders, as a perpetrator, co-perpetrator or accomplice," prosecutors said in a statement.

Belgian media report that the two brothers knew both metro bomber Khalid el-Bakraoui and his brother Ibrahim, who blew himself up at the airport with Najim Laachraoui.

Elder brother Smail F is suspected of renting the Etterbeek flat while his younger brother is alleged to have helped clean the flat, removing evidence before police arrived, public broadcaster RTBF reports. However, other reports indicate that Ibrahim F denies any involvement in the plot.

Belgian investigators are still unclear as to how many more suspects are at large.

Authorities are also concerned about the whereabouts of a backpack allegedly worn on 22 March by Krayem, a Swedish national said to have returned to Europe from Syria last September.

The suspect, Krayem, was spotted on CCTV wearing a similar backpack to Khalid el-Bakraoui when they had a brief conversation at Petillon metro station, a few stops away from Maelbeek. While el-Bakraoui blew himself up, Krayem did not.

Belgian Islamism expert Pieter Van Ostaeyen has warned that the authorities may be dealing with a far bigger jihadist cell than thought.

He told Belgian TV on Monday that the Brussels bombings, like the attacks on Paris on 13 November 2015 and the Brussels Jewish museum in May 2014, were linked to a network run by Paris attacker Abdelhamid Abaaoud and jihadist recruiter Khalid Zerkani.

"Potentially there are at least another 60 to 70 members of the Zerkani network still active," Van Ostaeyen warned.

Police are also investigating two other suspects, Herve BM and Bilal el-Makhoukhi, for participating in terrorist acts.

On Sunday, Belgian prosecutors revealed Abrini had told them that the original plan had been to target France but it was switched to Brussels when fellow Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels on 18 March.

Abdeslam was stopped by police near Ulm in south-western Germany last October. Krayem was with him at the time, using a fake Syrian passport, as was Amine Choukri who was also arrested on 18 March.

In a separate development, Belgian newspaper Het Nieuwsblad has obtained a photo of Abdeslam in jail in Bruges. The image shows Abdeslam with a beard, which he did not have before he went on the run last November.

The website says that he is being held in a top security wing of Bruges prison and checked on eight times per hour.

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