#BrusselsAttacks: Three suspects charged

Three suspects were charged with terrorism offences on Saturday including one man named in Belgian media as the third Brussels airport attacker who fled as the other two blew themselves up.

The man, described as a freelance journalist, Fayçal Cheffou, was reported to be the mysterious third man captured on CCTV footage wearing a hat and a light-coloured summer jacket previously identified as Mohamed Abrini, 31. The two suicide bombers with him, Ibrahim El-Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, detonated their suitcase bombs, but his failed to go off and he was seen running away.

Fayçal Cheffou

In earlier reports, however, the mysterious third man captured on camera was identified as Mohamed Abrini, 31.

Amid continuing confusion about the third suspect’s identity, a source close to the investigation said police were trying to confirm if the man is Cheffou, who was arrested as police rounded up suspects linked with the network behind the Brussels bombings on Thursday and Friday.

According to Le Soir newspaper, quoting an anonymous police source, Cheffou was recognised in a police lineup by the taxi driver who dropped off the three terrorists at the airport on Tuesday morning.The report has not been confirmed. A source close to the investigation said police were exploring a theory that Cheffou was the third attacker. “It is a hypothesis the investigators are working on,” the source said.

Cheffou and two other men are the first suspects to be charged over the Brussels airport and metro bombings that killed 31 people on Tuesday.

Cheffou was charged with "taking part in the activities of a terrorist group and actual and attempted terrorist murder,” prosecutors said.

Suspected of being a jihadist recruiter, he has been on the police radar for months.

Cheffou was arrested several times for attempting to persuade migrants who gather at the Maximilien park in Brussels to join radical groups. The Brussels mayor, Yvan Mayeur, had warned police several times that he was dangerous and asked for him to be detained.However, prosecutors reportedly refused, and in September last year the mayor obtained on order barring Cheffou from the park.

He is best known to the Belgian public for a video in which he complained that Muslims at a migrants’ centre in Brussels were served meals before the end of the Ramadan fast.

The two others, named only as Aboubakar A. and Rabah N., were charged with “terrorist activities and membership of a terrorist group”. Rabah N. was wanted in connection with a related raid in France on Thursday that the government said foiled a “major terrorist attack”.

François Hollande, the French president, said the network behind the Paris attacks that killed 130 people in November and the Brussels bombings on Tuesday was being “wiped out” although the threat remained high and other terror rings were still at large.

Belgian prosecutors said they were holding another suspect, Abderamane Ameroud, for an extra 24 hours. He was shot in the leg by police in Brussels on Friday in the Schaerbeek district where the Brussels bombings were prepared.

However, his arrest was also linked to Thursday’s raid in Paris.

Ameroud was reportedly convicted in 2003 as an accomplice in the assassination of the Afghan political and military leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, two years earlier.

One of those arrested on Friday, Tawfik A., was released “after extensive questioning”, the prosecutor’s office said.