Najim Laachraoui was one in every of two males who blew themselves up at Brussels airport however these near him have been left questioning how he might have been brainwashed so shortly.
The 24-yr-previous has been confirmed by the Belgian federal prosecutor as one of many suicide bombers who focused Zaventem Airport on Tuesday with a bomb hid in a suitcase.
That assault, mixed with one other explosion at a Brussels metro station, killed 31 individuals.
He has additionally been recognized because the potential bombmaker for the Paris terror assaults, after his DNA was discovered on explosives used within the French capital in the course of the November assaults.
His family and friends, nevertheless, keep in mind a superb scholar who was extra concerned with enjoying frisbee and soccer than murdering harmless individuals.
Laachraoui’s youthful brother Mourad, 20, stated he had been “a pleasant boy and particularly clever” who loved soccer and studying.
Mourad, a world-class taekwondo champion, stated his brother had been a practising Muslim – like the opposite family members – however his radicalisation and involvement within the killings had shocked his household.
“I used to be moved and surprised.
“I did not need to consider it was him – however you possibly can’t select your loved ones.”
He was remembered as a pupil with an ideal behaviour document at Sainte-Famille d’Helmet Institute in Brussels’ Schaerbeek district, the Catholic faculty the place he completed his secondary schooling in 2009, earlier than shifting on to the Free College’s Polytechnic Faculty.
A pal from his first yr electro-mechanical engineering course there in 2012 wrote on Fb: “I do not perceive how anybody might be brainwashed so shortly.
“How are you going to change sides and blow your self up whenever you used to play frisbee tournaments each weekend? I do not get it.
“He was in my research group, we might see one another each week, he got here to my flat. It by no means felt like he’d shoot me.”
It’s understood Laachraoui did not proceed his research past the primary yr, with a good friend saying he expressed a want to modify to drugs.
Nevertheless it later transpired that he had as an alternative gone to Syria in February 2013.
His household had heard nothing from him since.
On the Catholic faculty, his headmistress Veronica Pellegrini stated stated she was at a loss to elucidate his change in behaviour.
She added: “He was an excellent scholar with an immaculate disciplinary report.
“He by no means needed to repeat a yr.”
Following his disappearance to Syria in 2013, he reappeared in September final yr beneath the false identify of Soufiane Kayal, when he was stopped on the Austria-Hungary border by police for a routine examine.
Additionally within the automotive was Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect within the Paris assaults who was arrested every week in the past, and Mohamed Belkaid, killed on 15 March in a police raid.
