Brussels Bombing Update – Search for Man in Hat

NEW footage has been released showing the route the Brussels bomber took after fleeing the area. 

Belgium prosecutors have asked members of the public who saw the man to come forward.  

The suspect has been tracked on CCTV up until 09:50 local time. He was wearing a hat and light coloured jacket which he later discarded. 

Thirty-two people were killed in the March 22 attacks on the airport and the subway station, which Daesh has taken responsibility for. 

The three attackers were originally caught on camera, two of which were killed during the suicide bombings whilst the ‘man with the hat’, as prosecutors called him, was later seen Chaussee de Louvain, before he takes the Avenue de la Brabanconne, where he disappears at the junction with Rue du Noyer at 09:50. He is last seen wearing a light blue shirt with dark elbow patches and the hat.

Whilst the hunt continues for the man in the hat, the main suspect in the Paris terror attacks of 13 November, Salah Abdeslam, is not to be extradited from Belgium to France for several more weeks, his lawyer Sven Mary has said.

Allegedly Abdeslam’s fingerprints were found in the apartment where Algerian terror suspect Mohamed Belkaid was shot dead after opening fire on police.

Abdeslam was arrested three days later in Brussels’ Molenbeek neighbourhood.

It is thought that Abdeslam is the only surviving member of the terrorist group that killed 130 people in Paris during a coordinated series of attacks throughout the city last November. 

Two weeks after the attacks, Belgium’s Prime Minister, Charles Michel has given an interview to CNN where he explains that there have been “successes” and “failures” in the fight against terrorism. The country’s security services have come under severe scrutiny for their failure to stop the bombings and for not catching the Paris bomber suspect Saleh Abdeslam sooner.

He said: “I don’t accept the idea that a state such as Belgium would be a failed state because of a terrorist attack,” he told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour.

“We are a country that met successes in the fight against terrorism.

“But there is a failure, just like 9/11 was a failure for the United States, just like London was a failure for the UK, Madrid was a failure for Spain.”