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Brussels Suicide Bomber: “Model Student” At Catholic School

Najim Laachraoui, one of the alleged Brussels suicide bombers, was, according to the director of the Catholic high school he attended, a “model student”. Laachraoui was also a “veteran” Islamist fighter in Syria and is suspected of creating the explosive bomb belts that contributed to November’s Paris attacks, the Times of India reports: Security sources told local media that Laachraoui, a 25-year-old Belgian, was one of Tuesday’s airport suicide bombers, identifying him as one of the three men in the CCTV image released by police. “Najim Laachraoui was a very good student,” said Veronica Pellegrini, the director of the Institut de la Sainte Famille d’Helmet, a Catholic school in the ethnically mixed east Brussels borough of Schaerbeek. “He never failed a class,” Pellegrini said of Laachraoui, who studied at the school for six years, until graduating in 2009. “We haven’t heard from him since,” she told Reuters in a phone interview. Prosecutors said Laachraoui’s DNA was found in houses used by the Paris attackers last year. He left Brussels for Syria in February 2013. Local media have said he has technical training that could mean he was the armourer of the operation. Travelling under the false name Soufiane Kayal, he [...]