Khālid El Bakraoui ( ar, خالد البكراوي; 12 January 1989 – 22 March 2016), also known as Abū Walīd al-Baljīkī, was a Belgian national of Moroccan descent, confirmed to be the suicide bomber at the metro station in the

2016 Brussels bombings On 22 March 2016, two coordinated terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium were carried out by the Islamic State. Three coordinated suicide bombings occurred: two at Brussels Airport in Zaventem, and one at Maalbeek metro station on the Brussels ...

Early life

El Bakraoui was raised in Laken, a residential district in northwestern

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

. His father, a retired butcher and devout Muslim, emigrated from Morocco; his mother was described as "conservative and reclusive". His brother Ibrahim has been identified as one of two suicide bombers at Brussels Airport.

Criminal history

Arrests

On 27 October 2009, he was one of three men involved in a bank robbery, in which they kidnapped an employee and forced her to drive them to her workplace in Brussels and deactivate the alarm. They made off with €41,000. About two weeks later, Khalid stole a vehicle and was later found with it and a number of other stolen vehicles in a warehouse. Though he was detained, he was not charged at the time. In 2011, El Bakraoui was arrested for the possession of Kalashnikov rifles. In September 2011, he was convicted of the

carjack Carjacking is a robbery in which the item taken over is a motor vehicle.Michael Cherbonneau, "Carjacking," in ''Encyclopedia of Social Problems'', Vol. 1 (SAGE, 2008: ed. Vincent N. Parrillo), pp. 110-11. In contrast to car theft, carjacking is ...

ings, possession of weapons, and the 2009 bank robbery, being sentenced to five years in prison. He was released from prison after serving most of his sentence. In May 2015, following his release, El Bakraoui was arrested upon meeting with a former criminal accomplice, which violated a term of his

parole Parole (also known as provisional release or supervised release) is a form of early release of a prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by certain behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated parole officers, or ...

, but a judge released him because he continued to meet the rest of his parole conditions. From October 2015, he failed his parole appointments and abandoned his address, resulting in a cancelled parole as of February 2016.

International warrant of arrest and terrorist activities

In August 2015,

Interpol The International Criminal Police Organization (ICPO; french: link=no, Organisation internationale de police criminelle), commonly known as Interpol ( , ), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and cri ...

issued a warrant for his arrest. Two further arrest warrants were issued for El Bakraoui on 11 December 2015, one international and one European. Both were issued by a Paris judge investigating the November 2015 Paris attacks, because El Bakraoui, using false documents, rented the Charleroi house where fingerprints of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the mastermind of those attacks, as well as an involved suicide bomber, Bilal Hadfi, were found. According to a report by the

De Morgen ''De Morgen'' (Dutch for ''The Morning'') is a Flemish newspaper with a circulation of 53,860. The paper is published in Antwerp, Belgium. History and profile ''De Morgen'' originates from a merger in 1978 of two socialist newspapers ' (meaning ...

daily, Belgian authorities, acting after they learned, in the summer of 2015, of his call on friends to help him obtain as many Kalashnikov chargers as possible, searched El Bakraoui's home in October 2015, found evidence of "calls to jihad" and "images of known terrorists", but found no weapons and therefore did not make an arrest. On 15 March 2016, El Bakraoui and his brother

Ibrahim El Bakraoui Ibrahim El Bakraoui ( ar, إبراهيم البكراوي; 9 October 1986 – 22 March 2016) was a Belgian-Moroccan terrorist, confirmed to be one of the suicide bombers at the Brussels Airport in the 2016 Brussels bombings. Personal backg ...

evaded capture during a police raid in Brussels. On 16 March 2016, the

Federal Bureau of Investigation The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. Operating under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, ...

(FBI) in the United States sent information about them to authorities in the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

. The New York Police Department's Intelligence Division also informed the Dutch embassy liaison in Washington, that they were wanted for "terrorism, extremism and recruitment".

Death

Khalid El Bakraoui has been identified as the suicide bomber at Maalbeek metro station in

on 22 March 2016.

References