brussels
© Vincent Kessler / ReutersFlags fly at half mast at the European Union Commissionn Headquarters in Brussels following Tuesday's bombings in Brussels, Belgium, March 24, 2016.
It has emerged that Faycal C, the only person to be charged so far with last week's deadly terror attacks in Brussels, lived just a few hundred meters away from the European Union headquarters in a quiet residential area of the city.

Identified by the federal prosecutor as Faycal C, a list of tenants by the door to the block of flats where he resided revealed the name "Faycal Cheffou." Although he has been charged with terrorist activities, it has not been confirmed whether Faycal C was the man in the white coat who was captured on video on Tuesday walking with the two airport suicide bombers, Ibrahim El Bakraoui and Najim Laachraoui, at Brussels' Zaventem Airport.


Comment: In an odd instance of Belgian authorities appearing to honor the rule of law, Cheffou has been released from custody for lack of evidence to justify holding him. According to Le Soir, Cheffou was identified by the cab driver (Kim Sengupta, presumably) who drove the Bakraoui brothers to the airport as the man who accompanied them. So what's going on here? Was Sengupta's identification false? If it really was Cheffou, was he aware of what he was getting himself involved with? After all, the men with whom he was riding had just previously been in Belgian police custody. Why were they released? Were they released on condition that they participated in a 'special mission' of sorts?



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Brussels suspect CCTV footage next to image of Faycal Cheffou.
Police showed up Thursday to search Cheffou's apartment, but they did not find any weapons or explosives. Local residents said they were in disbelief at what had happened.

"We'd never have imagined anything like this," a local baker told AFP, adding: "It's always been calm around here." The neighborhood is home to a number of buildings associated with the European Union Commission.

Faycal Cheffou has claimed to be a freelance journalist who took a particular interest in the plight of refugees in Belgium. However, he was accused by Brussels Mayor Yves Mayeur of trying to recruit jihadists from among migrants.

Cheffou would spend a lot of time at a refugee center in Maximilien Park and Mayeur, who believed Cheffou was "dangerous," tried to have him legally banned from attending the facility. Cheffou was eventually banned from entering the park.

According to AFP, a YouTube video from 2014 showed Cheffou as a reporter saying that migrants celebrating the Ramadan month of fasting were not offered food by the authorities after dark.

"After 10:00 p.m. these people find themselves with nothing to eat, completely forgotten by the rest of the world," he says on the video. "This is a lack of respect for human rights."

"I am concerned by the shouts and the noise I can hear as they are crying for help."

Faycal was arrested Thursday evening after the car he was traveling in had been tailed by police.


Comment: Another arrest was made in Italy: Algerian-born forty-year-old Djamal Eddine Ouali, accused of making false documents for the Paris and Brussels attackers. A warrant was put out for his arrest in January. He exercized his right to remain silent and is awaiting extradition to Belgium:
According to some reports, Ouali's name was discovered in a raid in a Brussels apartment last October, during which hundreds of digital photographs were found among false documents, such as passports, along with the equipment to produce them. Images of three men suspected of planning the November Paris attacks, as well as a picture of Najim Laachraoui, a suicide bomber at Brussels Airport, were discovered among the photographs, The Local said.

On Tuesday, the Belgian capital was rocked by twin blasts at Zaventem Airport and an explosion at the Maalbeek Metro station, just meters away from key EU buildings, less than an hour later.

The Belgian prosecutor's office identified two suicide bombers as brothers Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui. According to Belgium's RTBF public broadcaster, both brothers, who were residents of the capital, were known to police for links to organized crime, but not for terrorism.

The third suspect in the Brussels airport attack was reported by Belgian media to be Najim Laachraoui. Born on May 18, 1991, he is a native of Schaerbeek, a municipality located in the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium.

On Monday, prosecutors said they had charged three more people with taking part in a terrorist group, while a fourth person was released after having been detained for questioning. The federal prosecutors identified the three charged as Yassine A., Mohamed B. and Aboubaker O., saying they could not give further information at this stage, Reuters reports.