Brussels Bomber Had Worked in EU Parliament: Spokesperson

An EU assembly spokesperson has said one of the Brussels bombers had worked as a cleaner at the EU Parliament.

People holding a banner reading “I am Brussels” behind flowers and candles to mourn for the victims at Place de la Bourse in the centre of Brussels, 22 March, 2016. (Photo: AP)

One of the Islamic State suicide bombers, who killed 32 people in Brussels on 22 March, had worked as a cleaner for a short period in the European Parliament six years earlier, a spokesman for the EU assembly said on Thursday.

In 2009 and 2010, “one of the perpetrators of the Brussels terrorist attacks worked for a period of one month for a cleaning company which was contracted by the European Parliament at the time,” spokesman Jaume Duch Guillot said in a statement which did not name the individual.

An EU official said the person was Najim Laachraoui, a 25-year-old Belgian who, prosecutors said, blew himself up in the airport attack and is also suspected of making suicide vests for last November’s Paris attacks in which 130 people died.

At the time of his temporary work in the parliament, he had no criminal record, the parliament’s spokesman said.