Paris suspect Abrini was ‘man in hat’ at Brussels airport bombing

PARIS/BRUSSELS: Paris attacks suspect Mohamed Abrini has confessed he was the ‘man in the hat’ who appeared next to the two suicide bombers at Brussels airport, Belgian prosecutors said Saturday.

“He confessed his presence at the crime scene. He explained having thrown away his vest (jacket) in a garbage bin and having sold his hat afterward,” the federal prosecutor’s office said in a statement.
Abrini, a Belgian of Moroccan origin, was seen at a petrol station north of Paris two days before the attacks in the French capital with other top suspect Salah Abdeslam, who drove one of the vehicles used in the November 13 assaults that killed 130 people.
The black Renault Clio the pair were driving was later used to transport the three suicide attackers who struck outside the Stade de France, and investigators believe Abrini accompanied Abdeslam and his brother Brahim, another attacker, on two other trips between Brussels and Paris.
Interviewed by AFP in November, Abrini’s family swore that on the night of the Paris carnage he was in Molenbeek, the tough Brussels neighborhood that has earned a reputation as a haven for radicals.
His trips back and forth between Paris and Brussels suggest he played at least a logistical role in the tangled network of Daesh militants behind two of the worst terror attacks on European soil in recent years.
Belgian prosecutors said Friday after Abrini’s arrest that he and Abdeslam had rented an apartment in the Paris suburbs used by the Nov. 13 gunmen before their deadly rampage.