Brussels airport suicide bomber guarded Western hostages held by Isis in Syria

Najim Laachraoui identified as the 'cultivated' and 'religious' member of Isis who guarded four French journalists

Najim Laachraoui is a suspect in the Brussels Airport bombing and has links to Salah Abdeslam

One of the two suicide bombers who blew themselves up at Brussels airport in March was previously an Isis jailer who guarded Western hostages in Syria.

Najim Laachraoui, also suspected of being the principal bomb-maker for both the Paris and Brussels attacks, has been formally identified as one of a team of French-speaking jihadists who guarded four captive French journalists in 2013-14.

Laachraoui, 24, then known as Idriss Abou, is also believed to have guarded the American journalist James Foley, who was executed in August 2014.

The identification by two of the French journalists adds to the already overwhelming weight of evidence that the Paris and Brussels attacks in November and March respectively were carried out by jihadists who had been sent back from Syria to attack European civilian targets.

A lawyer representing two of the journalists, Marie-Laure Ingouf, said her clients had recognised Laachraoui from media images as the “cultivated” and “religious” member of the squad which had guarded them.

She said that the four French hostages – Edouard Elias, Didier François, Nicolas Hénin and Pierre Torres – had shared the same cell as James Foley. Laachraoui had therefore also been the American’s jailer, as reported earlier this week.

In a written statement to The Independent, confirming a story in Le Parisien, Ms Ingouf said that another guard – a much less “cultivated” man – was Mehdi Nemmouche, the French man suspected of attacking a jewish museum in Brussels in 2014.

Najim Laachraoui, born in Belgium, had once trained as an electrical engineer. DNA traces found by French and Belgian investigators suggest that he played an important role in the construction of the suicide belts and bombs used in the Paris and Brussels attacks.

On 22 March, he was one of the two jihadis who blew themselves up at Zaventem airport in Brussels, killing 17 people including themselves. According to a Belgian press report yesterday, the third airport bomber, Mohamed Abrini, who escaped, had also been supposed to detonate a bomb in large suitcase. He was blown off his feet by the first explosion and was prevented by a surge of panicking travellers from returning to his luggage trolley to detonate his bomb.

According to Le Parisien, Najim Laachraoui was one of the calmer and less brutal members of an Isis team of prison guards in Syria. The newspaper quoted the former French hostages as saying that he would sometimes set scientific quiz questions for his prisoners.

He is believed to have left Brussels for Syria in 2013 and returned by at the end of last summer – as part of a larger team sent back to Europe by Isis to attack civilian targets.

In September of last year, his finger-prints were taken on the Austrian-Hungarian border while he was travelling under the name Soufiane Kaval.

His companion at the time was Salah Abdeslam, the young Belgian who escaped from Paris on the night of the 13 November attacks and was arrested in Brussels last month after four months on the run.

Laachraoui is believed to have used the same false name to rent a house near Namur south of Brussels which became the launchpad for the Paris attacks.