{"id":70996,"date":"2016-03-23T09:14:25","date_gmt":"2016-03-23T13:14:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/breaking911.com\/?p=70996"},"modified":"2016-03-23T09:14:25","modified_gmt":"2016-03-23T13:14:25","slug":"who-is-najim-laachraoui-suspected-isis-bomb-maker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/breaking911.com\/who-is-najim-laachraoui-suspected-isis-bomb-maker\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Is Najim Laachraoui, Suspected ISIS Bomb-Maker?"},"content":{"rendered":"
According to European authorities, Najim Laachraoui is a bomb-maker for the Islamic State – and this alleged skill-set may have put him at the center of two of Europe’s biggest terror plots in recent memory.<\/p>\n
There were reports Wednesday that Laachraoui had been arrested by Belgian authorities, but officials later told The Washington Post that this was a mistake and that, although a suspect had been arrested in connection with the Brussels bombings, it was not Laachraoui. Instead, the alleged Islamic State bomb-maker remained at large.<\/p>\n
Laachraoui, 24, was born in Morocco but raised in the Schaerbeek neighborhood of Brussels and holds a Belgian passport. He is believed to have studied electromechanical engineering at a local Catholic high school, the Institut de la Sainte-Famille d’Helmet. The Belgian prosecutor’s office says he traveled to Syria in February 2013, where he appears to have learned the skills necessary to make explosive devices.<\/p>\n
Laachraoui is alleged to have been stopped by Hungarian authorities while traveling with key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in September, just weeks before the attack in which Abdeslam and others are alleged to have killed 130 people. The men were stopped in a car going through a checkpoint between Hungary and Austria, and Laachraoui presented a fake document with the name Soufiane Kayal, the Belgian prosecutor’s office says.<\/p>\n
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