Khālid El Bakraoui (; 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 and close to Brussels, Belgium, were carried out by the Islamic State (IS). Two suicide bombers detonated bombs at Brussels Airport in Zaventem just outside Brussels, and one detonated a b ...

Early life

El Bakraoui was raised in

Laken (French language, French, ) or (Dutch language, Dutch, ) is a residential suburb in the north-western part of the Brussels-Capital Region, Belgium. It belongs to the List of municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region, municipality of the ...

, a residential district in northwestern

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

. 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 Brussels Airport is the main international airport of Belgium. It is located in the municipality of Zaventem in Flemish Brabant, northeast of Brussels. Also informally known as Brussels-National Airport or Brussels-Zaventem Airport, Brussels ...

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 a motor vehicle is taken over.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 usually i ...

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, supervised release, or being on paper, is a form of early release of a prisoner, prison inmate where the prisoner agrees to abide by behavioral conditions, including checking-in with their designated ...

, 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 – INTERPOL (abbreviated as ICPO–INTERPOL), commonly known as Interpol ( , ; stylized in allcaps), is an international organization that facilitates worldwide police cooperation and crime cont ...

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 A series of coordinated Islamist terrorist attacks took place on Friday, 13 November 2015 in Paris, France, and the city's northern suburb, Saint-Denis. Beginning at 21:16, three suicide bombers struck outside the Stade de France in Saint-De ...

, because El Bakraoui, using false documents, rented the Charleroi house where fingerprints of

Abdelhamid Abaaoud Abdelhamid Abaaoud (; 8 April 1987 – 18 November 2015) was a Belgian-born Islamic terrorist who had spent time in Syria and was suspected of having organized multiple terror attacks in Belgium and France, and is known to have masterminded th ...

, 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'' (; ''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 "Onwar ...

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 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 agency, intelligence and Security agency, security service of the United States and Federal law enforcement in the United States, its principal federal law enforcement ag ...

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

Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. 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