“Man in the Hat” Talks: Brussels Attackers Targeted Tel Aviv Flight
14 April, 2016 |
10 years ago
Jerusalem, 14 April, 2016 (TPS-IL) -- The Brussels terrorists had planned to attack passengers waiting to board a flight to Tel Aviv, the third would-be bomber and suspect Mohamed Abrini told the Belgian examining magistrate, according to official records seen by France’s BFM TV station.
Abrini, 31, has confessed to being the “man in the hat” seen in an airport surveillance video alongside Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, who blew themselves up in the Brussels airport on March 22 as part of a wave of terror attacks that killed 32 people. Yet Abrini fled the scene without detonating his explosives, only to be caught nearly three weeks later after a massive manhunt for the elusive “man in the hat.”
The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility for the Brussels terror attacks.
Abrini told interrogators that he didn’t share his comrades’ ideology and, in fact, “would never hurt a fly.” Ibrahim El Bakraoui chose the targets at Brussels’ Zaventem Airport, Abrini said, which included departure halls for flights to the United States and Russia as well as Tel Aviv.
Abrini further claimed that he had not been to Syria and never intended to blow himself up. The Belgian federal prosecutor has previously announced that Abrini traveled to Syria in 2015.
Belgian police believe that Abrini was part of an ISIS-affiliated terror supercell, comprising as many as 50 conspirators, that is behind the Brussels attacks, as well as the attacks in Paris last November that killed 130 people.
